Promises to Keep
by ChibiRisu-chan
Summary: AU, shounen ai; ten years later, a pregnant Sakura is disappointed she can't go with Shaoran to Hong Kong for the holidays, and Touya and Yukito watch over her. (Yue even endures pink Hello Kitty hairclips for his mistress' sake...)
1. ch 1: Home for the holidays

**Promises to Keep, chapter 1   
"Home for the Holidays" **

"...And don't let her strain herself. She's not used to needing to be so careful, she thinks she can still save the world, I can't seem to get through to her that the rest of us can save the world for a while too and she needs to just rest right now..."

"I understand, Shaoran-kun," Yukito said, for the dozenth time in ten minutes, still gently smiling -- although both he and Sakura flinched a bit at the sound of wood snapping behind them, probably Touya's wooden cooking chopsticks suffering for his bad mood. Shaoran looked back towards the kitchen, and his eyes widened a little bit.

Sakura reached up and squeezed both of her husband's hands, and lent her voice to Yukito's attempts to gently coax the young man out and onto his plane before Touya got to take out his bad mood on the person most commonly responsible for it. "I feel _perfectly_ fine! We're both perfectly fine. Go on; you'll miss your flight. I love you too, Shaoran, but you really do need to hurry..."

Shaoran still looked to Yukito for an assurance nobody on the planet could actually give him. "Should I tell Yue all this too?"

"We _do_ talk occasionally, you know," Yukito assured him, his voice brimming with a mirthful delight that barely managed not to spill over into laughter. "Sakura-chan will be fine. If anything happens, Kero-chan will let you know. If anything serious happens, I'll come for you myself. That is -- Yue will. Go on. It's all right. It's just one week."

Shaoran looked at Sakura again, and heaved a huge sigh, and bent to straighten the blanket he'd tucked over her one more time. "I love you," he murmured.

"I love you too," she replied, smiling. "I promise I'll call if anything happens! Go on, love."

The second chopstick snapped in Touya's hands, accompanied by a wordless but very expressive growl.

"I'd hurry if I were you," Yukito told Shaoran confidentially. "You know To-ya and his sister complex-"

_"I HEARD that, Yuki!" _The pronouncement was followed by loud footsteps storming out of the kitchen.

"...See you next week!" Shaoran said desperately, and dashed for the door.

Touya, half covered in flour with a pair of broken chopsticks clenched in his fist, glared his frustration at the door that slammed behind Shaoran; then he transferred his glare to his utterly unrepentant lover. "...I do _not_ have a sister complex! I didn't even strangle him the day I found out they... they were..."

Even two years later, he couldn't bring himself to say the words "having sex" in reference to his own little sister, no matter how married she was; Yukito burst into gales of laughter, and Sakura put both hands over her mouth to keep from joining him. Touya flung both hands into the air and stormed back into the kitchen.

"Oh, dear," Yukito said, wheezing with glee. "I think I'm going to be sleeping on the sofa tonight!"

Sakura wilted a little. "I'm sorry, Yukito-san -- I know I'm an imposition; I didn't want to interrupt your private time with oniichan, I really didn't. It's just that the doctor says I can't possibly travel to Hong Kong with Shaoran right now -- I'm so sorry..."

Yukito shook his head, and took off his glasses to scrub the laugh-tears from his eyes. "Don't you dare apologize! We both love you." 

From the kitchen, Touya added, "And we're not about to let you spend the holidays all by yourself, even if you weren't almost big enough to burst with the junior monster!"

"Don't call my baby a monster!" Sakura struggled to untangle herself from the blanket and get up to scold her brother further; Yukito stilled her gently, both hands curved to the taut mound of her abdomen.

"It's all right, Sakura-chan. I promised you, remember? If anyone makes you upset, I'll beat them up for you! You sit right there and rest; I'll be right back."

Wide-eyed, because she wasn't entirely sure how serious Yukito was being, Sakura got as far as "Yukito-san--" before the slender young man stood up and pushed back his sleeves and walked resolutely into the Kinomoto family's kitchen.

"To-ya," he said, "you know how important it is not to upset Sakura-chan just now. I'm going to have to reprimand you."

"No, you're not."

Yukito crossed his arms. "Is that a challenge?"

"Nah, just an observation. Nobody called her baby a monster. ...Just a junior monster!"

_"Oniichan!"_ Sakura wailed.

"Then I'll just have to give you a junior reprimand," Yukito replied, and jumped on Touya's back to try to get him into a headlock for a thorough head-scrubbing.

"Oi! Yuki, you -- let go -- hey --"

"Not until you apologize!" Yukito said, laughing.

Over the back of the couch, Sakura watched in wide-eyed bemusement as the tangle of her brother and her almost-brother-in-law staggered flailing around the kitchen; Touya stepped on spilled flour that made one foot slide, Yukito tried valiantly to catch them both before they could hit the floor and overcorrected, and Sakura clamped both hands over her eyes until the crashing and clattering and thumps were done and all that was left was a faintly whimpering giggle from Yukito.

"Sakura-chan," he called a bit breathlessly, "how do you feel about ordering in tonight? To-ya's treat, of course!"

"Why, you little--!"

"I think that sounds like a wonderful idea," Sakura said.

An hour and a half later, sitting on the sofa between two of her four favorite men on the planet, Sakura sighed when Yukito snuck another dumpling onto her plate.

"Yukito-san, I really can't eat another mouthful! My stomach's too crowded already." She put both hands down into the sofa and stretched awkwardly, trying to find a more comfortable position to rest in; her pregnancy made a snug mound curving the maternity dress Tomoyo had made for her, and she rubbed her fullest place in discomfort.

"Here, then," Yukito said, and perched her plate atop the convenient bulge of her belly, lending his hands to rubbing the round distension for her.

The plate wobbled when she giggled. "Yukito-san--!"

Touya rolled his eyes at both of them and rescued Sakura's plate from its precarious perch -- and ate the dumpling himself.

"To-ya!" Yukito protested. "That was for Sakura and her baby!"

"It's all right," Sakura said hastily. "I really would burst if I ate another bite!"

"Just wait a bit and you'll be hungry again," Yukito said, with the voice of experience. "That's why I made him order dim sum. You can snack on little things all evening rather than needing to eat everything at once. You need to eat for two, after all."

"Most people's concept of eating for two doesn't involve ordering two sets of everything on the menu, Yuki," Touya mumbled, still chewing.

Yukito said, "Be glad I'm not upsetting Sakura-chan tonight, or you'd regret that!" He was still massaging her abdomen gently; to Sakura's othersight, his hands glowed softly with power. 

Sakura bit her lip to keep from saying so aloud. Not because of any lingering difficulties between Yukito and Yue -- as the years passed, the two of them had settled into an easier harmony within the body they shared; Yue had learned from Yukito what it was to know joy and laughter and love, and Yukito had learned from Yue what it was to accept inhumanity and the strength that was needed to bear his birthright. They talked with each other; sometimes Yukito's eyes would go unfocused, and then he'd mention something Yue had said, or sometimes Yue would close his eyes and lend Yukito his voice. Touya loved them both; but Yue tended to remain hidden through their day to day life, both because Yukito was easier to explain and because he found it restful to let Yukito's bright and cheerful personality shine its gentle light on the life they shared. But Touya had never regained the magic he had given away to save his beloved friend's life, and so Sakura tried not to mention magic in front of him when she could help it.

Instead, very shyly, she murmured, "That feels very nice, Yukito-san."

His smile held a bit of Yue's deeper knowledge in it; he heard what she wasn't saying, and replied simply, "I'm glad to help."

Touya shifted around, glared at the ceiling, scratched behind his ear, and muttered something incomprehensible.

Sakura blinked at him, and then at Yukito, who now had a purely human and rather impish grin on. "What...?" she asked.

Yukito simply looked at Touya with an expectant quirk to his brows. Touya held out for about thirty seconds, then surrendered to the pressure of those angelic eyes and the wickedly knowing glint in them. With his cheeks burning, Touya mumbled, "Me too...?"

"You too...?"

"Your big brother wants to know if he can touch the baby, Sakura-chan," Yukito translated, still with that irrepressible mirth dancing in his eyes. 

Sakura's eyes widened, and she put both hands to her cheeks to hide the blushing; she couldn't form words to answer, just a few incoherent stammering sounds, but she nodded so vigorously that Yukito bit his lip to keep from laughing.

"I told you you didn't need to worry," Yukito said, which earned him a glower and a light cuff across the head.

"Who was worried?" 

Still, Touya made a too elaborate business of being casual as he brushed his fingertips lightly over the soft fabric of Sakura's maternity dress, barely enough to ruffle it.

Yukito choked, wheezed, and managed to gasp, "I'm sorry, Sakura-chan," before he turned away and buried his face in both hands, his whole body shaking with the attempt to fight back gales of hilarity.

Sakura's face was a brighter pink than the bow in her hair; but she gathered together the nerve to place her hand over her brother's, pressing his palm against the mound of her pregnancy, because it was obvious he was intent on treating her like an eggshell on the verge of shattering. 

Touya sat bolt upright, flustered. "Don't press so hard! Should you push like that? The baby--" 

His voice cut off short, as he stared down at their intertwined hands upon her abdomen. Then his voice came back at twice the volume: "I told you not to push like that! What was that? Should I call the doctor? Yuki, stop laughing already and help me call the--"

Sakura couldn't help herself; she dissolved into giggles too, holding her brother's hand tightly. "No doctors...! I'm fine... that... that was just... kicking..."

Touya looked back and forth between Sakura, Yukito, and the alarmingly active bulge of Sakura's middle. "Kicking?" he repeated numbly. "...Doesn't that hurt? Are you sure you don't need a doctor? Dammit, Yuki, stop _laughing_ already..."

"You're not making that easy!" Yukito gasped, clutching at ribs that were protesting their abuse. He took his glasses off again and rubbed the heel of his hand across his eyes, still shaking with the struggle not to simply fall over in hysterics; Touya made an irritated swipe at him, and Sakura caught his hand quickly, her cheeks still pink with embarrassment and suppressed amusement tangled in together.

"I'm just fine, oniichan. Trust me. I know my own body. I know my baby. We're both doing fine. Believe Yue-san if you don't believe me. That's why Kero-chan is with Shaoran; Eriol-kun says they'll both know when it's time. --Well, that and Kero-chan is easier to put in a carry-on than Yukito-san is! I've been taking care of the baby for months and months now; I promise I know what I'm doing. You won't hurt the baby just by touching. Really, you won't..."

Touya still looked at Yukito for confirmation; Yukito nodded a little, still grinning maniacally. "Who doesn't have a sister complex...?"

"Ask Yue," Touya growled, still as easily nettled by Yukito's teasing as Sakura was by being called a monster. "Does he think it's okay for her to just push people's hands into her stomach like this...?"

Yukito closed his eyes for a moment, holding an internal conversation, and then the corner of his mouth quirked as he looked over at Touya and Sakura's startlingly similar hanging-on-Yue's-answer expressions. "Yue says, and I quote, 'Tell him he hasn't hurt her; he'll know it if he does. He'll know because he'll be sleeping on the floor for the week and Keroberos will be tearing his head off shortly thereafter. Now let me go back to sleep.' I think he was having a nice dream..."

"That's not terribly informative, you know," Touya said, with half-lidded eyes.

"Here, silly," Yukito said, and took Touya's hand between his own; unselfconscious, he brushed a gentle kiss against the palm of his lover's hand, then smiled at them both. "Shall we help Sakura-chan be more comfortable?" 

He placed Touya's palm high atop the mound of his sister's pregnancy and mirrored it with his own hand, so that their fingertips touched in the middle; then he guided Touya's hand into mirroring the tender massage he'd performed earlier, slowly rubbing down the distended curve, then trailing their palms out to her side and back up to the starting point, tracing a great gentle heart-shape with their hands. "The warmth and the pressure of our hands helps to relax her strained muscles," Yukito said, "and rubbing up her side helps counteract the strain of gravity at her waist and back, while rubbing down her middle helps encourage the baby to settle properly for birth. ...Or at least that's the way Cl-... I mean, Eriol-san explained it to Shaoran and Yue."

"And you believed him?" Touya asked.

"I don't know what the reasons are," Sakura said shyly, "but it does feel wonderful."

Touya glowered at the ceiling and then at his toes and grumbled something incoherent, but when Yukito let go of his hand, he kept carefully mirroring the pattern Yukito rubbed, so that they would trace both halves of the heart in unison. Sakura smiled at them both, delighted.

"Now if only Shaoran and Dad--" she stopped to yawn widely -- "and Tomoyo-chan could be here too..."

Yukito bit his lip again, a private glitter sparkling in his eyes. Touya didn't miss it, but he wasn't about to start a brawl across the bulge of his heavily pregnant and drowsing sister; he kept rubbing a dutiful mirror to Yukito's lead until Sakura let her head tip over against her brother's shoulder and her eyes drifted closed.

Yukito stilled their hands then, softening his voice: "Let's let her rest. Yue says she tires out so very easily now..."

Touya nodded, and caught Yukito's hand when his lover moved to tidy up the leftovers from their dinner order. "What was that look about?"

"What look?"

"That 'I know something you don't know and I'm enjoying every minute of it' look."

"Who, me?"

Touya picked up a handful of the newspaper and reached over and bonked Yukito on the head with it. "Spill it, Yuki. It can't be the brat coming back, they spent too long sapping over each other already, so what is it about Dad and Tomoyo-chan?"

"Your father's going to be at the archaeological conference until Tuesday, and Tomoyo-san has a design show in Kyoto on Thursday. You know that," Yukito said, working entirely too hard on the innocent-angel eyes.

Touya sighed quietly, mindful of Sakura's head on his shoulder, and said, "So what hellraising have the three of you plotted up for Wednesday?"

Yukito said, "I thought you said you weren't psychic anymore."

"Psychic or not," Touya said. "after spending this many years around you, Tomoyo-chan, and that Hiiragizawa kid, anybody with half a brain learns paranoia real fast."

"I don't know whether I should be hurt or flattered," Yukito replied lightly. "I'll tell you later, when we're alone."

"She's completely out."

"Yes, but her cards are always mindful of anything that could affect her," Yukito said, "and they're even more attentive than usual lately. Besides, I do intend to have you all to myself later tonight..."

"...With her room next door...?"

Yukito gave him a terribly patient look. "To-ya, your baby sister is twenty years old, and within a few weeks of giving birth to your first niece. There's no way she could have spent two years married _AND_ gotten herself so very pregnant without learning at least a few of the basics."

Touya was too pinned to squirm the way he needed to; instead he just picked at the end of the sofa arm with a very, very nervous and agitated finger. "...Dammit, Yuki, there are things I just don't want to think about, okay?"

Yukito bent and kissed his cheek gently. "I know, silly. And it would be a bit cruel to remind her that she's alone right now. But there are quite a lot of rooms in this house which aren't next door to her bedroom at all."

Touya breathed a sigh of relief, and then blinked, and then glared at Yukito again. "You could have mentioned that part _first_, you know."

"But you're so cute when you're all riled up and fidgeting in embarrassment like that." Yukito grinned at his outraged expression. "_And_ you're too conscientious a big brother to drop her on the sofa and chase me down for vengeance, too. Lucky, lucky me!" 

He folded his hands behind his head and wandered whistling into the kitchen with the empty dinner plates, then started humming happily to himself as he drew water to wash them.

Touya glared murder at the contents of the coffee table, because nothing in reach was both solid enough to throw at Yukito's head and non-breakable enough to survive the impact with the ground when it fell after ricocheting.

Sakura shifted a little in her sleep, her brows quirked together in momentary discomfort; Touya patted her middle very gently, and started rubbing again. The baby shifted beneath his hands, settling more comfortably into the curve of her mother's body, and Sakura gave a small contented sigh and snuggled closer to him.

"...'m not a monster..." she mumbled in her sleep; Touya laughed softly and smoothed her hair.

"You'll always be a monster to me."


	2. ch 2: Fishnet stockings by the chimney

**Promises to Keep, chapter 2  
"Fishnet stockings by the chimney"   
**(more random fluff from Risu-chan ^_^)  


  
Sakura blinked her way back to consciousness a couple of hours later, hearing snippets of soft conversation. 

"...more comfortable to sleep in her own bed..."

"...don't want to disturb her..."

"Yue could carry her..."

Sakura put a hand over her mouth to stifle a yawn that threatened to crack her jaw, and scrubbed at her eyes. "Hmm...?"

"The monster wakes!" Touya declaimed, and then sharply bent over his assaulted ribcage. "...Ow! You been sharpening your elbows or something...?"

"Hmph!" Sakura struggled again to coax her awkward bulk out of the sofa, which was deep and comfortable but assumed an ability to bend forward which was rather impaired by the roundness and fullness of her middle. "I should clean up, since you brought dinner..."

"Already taken care of," Yukito said, smiling; she blinked at the sparkling-clean table.

"How long was I asleep?"

"As long as you needed to be," Yukito replied, and got up to take a plate off the kitchen counter to hand to her. "You're hungry again by now, aren't you."

Sakura opened her mouth to ask why she would be, and then realized how good the food smelled, even cooled to room temperature; she managed a quick "Thanks!" before she dove in.

Touya made a show of backing away. "Careful, Yuki. Looks like this one bites. Better stay out of reach or she might start eating us too..."

Around a mouthful of rice, Sakura mumbled, "O-nii-_chan!_"

"It takes a lot of food to get that fat!" Touya said, and then swore vehemently as she kicked him in the ankles hard.

"You... you... you're so _mean_...!" She gulped down the last of the food on the plate and looked up at Yukito pleadingly. "Am I really that fat...?"

"You're not fat at all," he said, sitting on his heels to smile up at her. "You've grown, of course; as the baby develops, you're blossoming with it. And you're not at all overweight; you're simply ripening. Smile, so that our blossoming Sakura-flower will be a happy one." He reached up and set a fingertip under her chin, and smiled for her, because he knew that she still couldn't resist his smiles; her cheeks pinked again, and she made a soft dazed sound that sounded something like 'hanyaaaan.'

Yukito looked up at her smirking brother, and said, "One of the two of us is sleeping on the sofa tonight if you don't apologize and start behaving yourself."

"I can't help it if she looks like a whale!" Touya said.

_"...ONIICHAN!!"_

"What?" he asked. "I'm sure whales get pregnant too..."

"Oniichan no _baka!_" Both hands fisted, blinking at tears, she started thumping on him vigorously; laughing a little, and yelping a little too, Touya tried to fend her off without much success until Yukito gathered her into his arms and rested his cheek against the crown of her head.

"Sakura-chan," he murmured, "I made a promise to Shaoran-kun. I promised him you'd be safe and protected here this week, and that you'd rest comfortably, and wouldn't need to be upset. So any time you feel like being upset, tell me and I'll be upset for you instead, all right?"

Sakura nodded against his chest, with tears of frustration trickling down her cheeks. "He's such an idiot...!" she choked. "Even if... if I do look like a whale... he doesn't have to _say_ it like that..."

Touya made a small sound of shock, and said, "Monster, are you _really_ crying...?"

"Touya, be quiet for a minute," Yukito said, smoothing Sakura's hair gently.

"I didn't mean--" He stopped, and looked away. "Aw, hell..."

"Sakura-chan, your brother loves you very, very much," Yukito murmured, "so much that it frightens him sometimes. Because he also loved your mother very, very much, and she died. And he's clumsy when he's frightened. And sometimes he's clumsy whether or not he's frightened; and sometimes he's just impossible because he wants to be. He's not comfortable being that unguarded; it makes him feel vulnerable to be gentle without teasing you. But he's going to learn this week." Yukito looked up at him over Sakura's head, and added, "Because one of us is definitely going to be sleeping on the sofa until he does."

"Hey!" Touya reached toward Yukito; calmly, Yukito pushed his hand away.

"I have promises to keep, To-ya," he replied. "Both to Sakura-chan and to Shaoran-kun -- and to you yourself, if you recall. You asked Yue to protect Sakura-chan for you, when you gave me your power; I intend to keep that promise too. When she's feeling strong and energetic, the two of you can tease each other all you like; but right now she's not that strong. Her strength is going for her baby. I know you love her; she knows you love her too; but you're going to be gentler with her this week, because she doesn't need to have to be strong enough to fight back against you too. Understood?"

Touya looked back and forth between his sniffling sister and his surprisingly stern-faced lover, and he ran a hand through his hair. "I was kidding," he said, rather lamely.

"And you're not going to do it again. No more teasing that you can see is upsetting to her. Not this week. --Promise me, To-ya." Over the years, Yukito had learned from Yue's unswerving resolution; he rarely used that stern resolve, but when he did, he was adamant, however quietly and gently he spoke.

Touya knew it, too. "I promise, Yuki."

"Now apologize to Sakura-chan."

"Yuki..."

Yukito looked at him, steadily, unflinching, and Touya looked away first; he stood up and sighed, and dug both hands through his hair, and then sat on the edge of the coffee table and reached over to touch his sister's knee gently.

"Hey, monster," he said gruffly. "I'm sorry. You're always going to be _my_ monster, you know; I can't help that part. But I... um... I didn't mean to make you cry..." He shrugged a little, helplessly. "Yuki's right, I'm a clumsy jerk sometimes. I'll try to be more careful. Baby monsters are more fragile, after all... I... um... I'm really sorry. Forgive me...?"

Sakura scrubbed at her cheeks and nodded a little, still not looking at him. In a very tiny voice, she said, "It's okay... I know I've gotten... big around. You don't have to remind me... I don't forget..."

Touya groaned, and looked up at Yukito, and said, "I feel like the world's most insensitive asshole right now. What do I do?"

Yukito didn't reply directly, still gently smoothing Sakura's hair. "I think he should work a little to make it up to you, don't you, Sakura-chan? Something completely indulgent and pampering. Say, breakfast in bed. Fresh pancakes with strawberries, and orange juice. Does that sound good?"

Still huddled around her shame, Sakura murmured, "Never mind... it's all right..."

"Crepes with chocolate chips, then," Yukito said. "and ice cream. And he cleans your room for you this week. We'll need to get Tomoyo-chan to make him a maid's outfit."

A little alarmed, Sakura blinked up at him. "No, really, Yukito-san... it's... it's not..."

"Better the first time?" he asked, a fingertip to his lips. "You're right; you do need to think of nuitrition, after all. So, To-ya, pancakes tomorrow morning. And strawberries, and juice. In a maid's outfit. I'm sure there's a store that rents them. Black silk, with a tulle skirt, and a lace apron. And black fishnet stockings..."

"Yukito-san!" Sakura yelped, beating Touya to it only because her brother was choking and wheezing and thumping one fist weakly on the floor.

"Pancakes!" Touya gasped. "Pancakes and strawberries and juice, tomorrow morning, fine, but _no_ fishnet stockings _anywhere_..."

"_No_ fishnet stockings," Sakura agreed faintly. "Er. No. Definitely not."

Yukito turned his most beatific smile on them both. "You see, I knew we could work this out!"

Brother and sister traded an identical look of bemusement; then Sakura started to giggle, and Touya said, "Remind me never to ask him what his definition of '_not_ working it out' is."

As they closed the drapes and turned down the lights and prepared for bed, though, Sakura hesitated in the middle of the living room, hugging her pajamas to herself with her cheeks pinked again.

"What is it?" Touya asked, coming back from locking the kitchen door.

"I... can I ask..." She gulped a little, and bent her face into the pajama fabric, and said all in a rush, "CanIaskYuesanforhelpwithsomething?"

Touya and Yukito blinked at each other. "Something you can't ask of either of us?" Yukito said, a little wistfully.

"It's just... embarrassing... and Yue-san doesn't laugh very much, so I hope he wouldn't laugh at me..." She gulped again, and said in a very small voice, "I'm getting... so clumsy, lately -- I mean, I'm always getting... rounder, and heavier, it's difficult to adjust... and... I don't want to slip and fall on the wet tiles in the bathroom... Shaoran insisted I shouldn't be in a bath alone, and I know he's overprotective but it makes sense, I don't want the baby to get overheated and I don't want to slip, but it's _too_ embarrasing to ask one of you -- I'd almost rather ask Kero-chan because he's not human at all, but it made much more sense to send him in Shaoran's carry-on, and I'm not supposed to use the cards unless it's an emergency, and even if I could, the Mirror card would look just like me right now, which would be twice as awkward, and... I'm babbling, aren't I...? I'm sorry..."

Touya and Yukito looked at each other; then Touya took a step forward and hugged his sister close, despite her bulge, and said, "You know I changed your diapers when you were small enough to carry in one arm. And if Yukito had existed then, I'm sure he'd have helped."

"But that's _why_ I can't ask you," Sakura said, fiercely blushing. "I'm embarrassed enough as it is!"

The moon-hued brilliance of Yue's power poured through the room for a moment, and he furled his wings behind himself. "I won't laugh at you," he said soberly. "Neither would Yukito, but he's been teasing you both this evening, so we understand your concern."

Touya and Sakura both looked at Yue -- his pale and slender elegance, the robes that brushed the floor when he put his feet on the ground, the long silver-white hair that trailed the ground behind him -- and then they looked at each other, and Touya chuckled.

"If nothing else, we're going to have to pin all that hair up, or it'll get soaked and he'll be dripping like a wet rat all evening!"

"I would never look like a wet rat," Yue replied, just a bit miffed beneath the perpetual calm.

Sakura glowered up at her big brother, and said, "I think you owe Yue-san strawberry pancakes for breakfast too. Whales and wet rats; you're so rude!"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever." Touya grinned evilly at the tall angel. "Just your luck that the only hair-clips in the house are left from when Sakura was in grade school. You're going to be completely adorable with pink plastic Hello Kitty bows all over your head."

Yue tried his best to put on a quelling glare. It didn't work when the porcelain of his complexion was ever so faintly stained with pink.

Sakura elbowed her brother in the ribs again. "Oniichan! You just got done promising Yukito-san you'd stop upsetting people!"

"Nope. I got done promising Yukito I'd stop upsetting _you._ This guy's fair game; if he's got issues, he can gripe at Yukito for not getting a good enough promise out of me!"

"Oniichan..."

"He tried to get me into a black silk maid outfit with fishnets and you expect me not to take any chance for vengeance I can get?" Touya asked with a rhetorical flourish at the ceiling. "Where's the justice in that?"

Sakura thought about it for a minute and sighed. "But that was Yukito-san. Yue-san would never try something like that."

"You sure about that? They've got more in common than they let on."

That pink tinge to Yue's face was brightening a bit; somehow he kept his face straight as he murmured, "I assure you I have no intentions of putting anyone in fishnets."

"Oh, I know that," Touya said. "But Yukito would just laugh if I went at him with the Hello Kitty hairclips; it's no fun picking on someone unless they get bothered! Come on, you've got some pink and frillly humiliations to suffer."

Sakura blinked at her big brother, who was chortling to himself as he pulled a double handful of hair clips and ribbons out of a box in the top of the linen closet. In a low voice, Yue said, "Mistress, is this completely necessary...?"

"Let's see how fast we can braid your hair," Sakura suggested. "Maybe if we can get it out of temptation's range fast enough...?"

Despite their best efforts, Yue had a lot of hair to be dealt with; while he and Sakura braided, Touya entertained himself by reaching over and sticking clips and bows and ribbons in completely at random. When they were finished, it took Sakura all the willpower she had not to laugh at her poor longsuffering guardian; Touya had no such mercy, unrepentantly cracking up every time he looked at Yue's head. The hastily-done braids were wound around the top of his head like a somewhat lopsided daisy-crown, and Touya had thrown enough random pink bits of preteen plastic cuteness into the tangle that Yue's hair looked distressingly like a vanilla-frosted cupcake dipped in bright sprinkles.

"I am and will eternally be grateful for his gift, but there are times I utterly despair of my other self's taste," Yue murmured. "To have chosen someone with a personality like _that_..."

Sakura reached up on tiptoe to try to smooth out a couple of wild white ends that were sticking out at random, then bit her lip when Touya guffawed again; she took Yue's hands between her own and said, "Let's go. He can laugh by himself for a while."

Yue followed her toward the bathroom stiffly, his shoulders squared against the sound of Touya's enthusiastic hilarity. One of the more precariously-placed hairclips fell out and bounced down the stairs; Yue hesitated, and Sakura tugged on his hand again. "Come on," she said, almost begging. "I'm so sorry, Yue-san. Tomorrow we'll figure out something better to do with your hair. And no Hello Kitty, on my honor..."

"Or fishnets?" Touya wheezed, leaning on the edge of the stairwell.

"No fishnets at _all_, _anywhere_, on _anybody_," Sakura said firmly, and stuck out her tongue at him before she closed the bathroom door behind the still utterly-miserable Yue.

They could both hear Touya laughing in the hallway; Sakura murmured, "I'm really, _really_ sorry, Yue-san..." She brushed a hand over his feathers lightly; they always ruffled up when he was feeling wary or cornered or upset, and likely he was feeling all three right now. "I'll try to be really quick, okay?"

Yue breathed a soft sigh, and shook his head. "Don't rush or you _will_ slip, Mistress." A flicker of something else crossed his face for a moment; it looked almost like pain, and Yue touched his fingertips to his temples gingerly. In a too-neutral voice, he said, "Yukito insists that I ask you for a mirror. He wants to see why Touya was laughing so much."

"He isn't _watching_, is he?" Sakura wailed.

"He'll respect _your_ privacy," Yue replied, still looking pained. "_Mine_, however, seems to be far more negotiable."

Sakura bit her lip hard, caught between concern and the tug of those treacherous giggles. "Poor, poor Yue-san... here." She opened the cabinet and took out a hand-mirror to give to him, then turned away in an awkward attempt to try to give Yue something resembling privacy to suffer his embarrassment in. 

Sakura heard the rustle of his wings, and suspected he was bristling even more at the sound of Yukito's laughter in his mind. Although he'd learned both joy and laughter from Yukito, outright teasing was something that the solemn and reserved angel still struggled with -- which, of course, made him a prime target for both her elder brother and Yue's own mischievous other self, not to mention the eternally irrepressible Kero-chan. Sakura felt very much on Yue's side in the ongoing teasing-battles, because she still struggled with her brother's teasing too.

The mirror clicked against the shelf when Yue put it down, and he murmured aloud, "I _said_ you can laugh at me with your boyfriend later. My mistress is in need of assistance. Go to sleep."

With her hands hesitating on the buttons of her maternity gown, Sakura said rather fiercely, "Oniichan really is an idiot, isn't he? This is embarrassing enough for me; he didn't have to go out of his way to make you miserable too!"

Yue paused, and tilted his head a bit to one side, and said, "That's why he did it, then, isn't it."

"Of course it is!" Sakura said, her hands shaking with frustration. "Whenever he can torture even _more_ people..."

"No, that's not what I mean." Quietly, Yue took the task of unfastening the buttons from her. "It puts us in balance," he murmured. "I don't understand why you find your need embarrassing, but right now I understand the _fact_ of embarrassment all too well; and you can't cripple yourself with self-consciousness when you need only take one look at me to realize that some things are far more humiliating than the simple awkwardness of your pregnancy. So we can understand each other a bit more easily, like this."

Still blushing, Sakura said, "And we can think up what we're going to do to pay him back, too."

"Oh, most definitely," Yue agreed, steadying her as she stepped over the sill into the shower area.

"There has to be something worse than fishnets out there!"

Yue blinked, realizing yet again the hidden depths of determination within this deceptively sweet-and-gentle-looking young woman. A bit weakly, he said, "_Worse_ than fishnets, Mistress?"

"I'm sure you'd have found fishnets less torturous than those old Hello Kitty hairpins, Yue-san," Sakura said, scrubbing shampoo into her hair. "You wear leggings all the time. ...So we have to think of something that's even awfuller than pink plastic grade-school girl hairclips to put on him!"

"...Remind me never, _ever_ to make you angry with me, Mistress."

Downstairs, looking through the refrigerator to see whether he had the ingredients he'd need for the next morning's pancakes, Touya sneezed. Then he looked up towards the bathroom with a rogue's grin. "Yeah, whatever..."


	3. ch 3: Midnight snacks

**Promises to Keep, Chapter 3**   
**"Midnight snacks"**   
(no, there won't be new chapters every couple days after I get back to work. ^^;; Just took advantage of vacation time...)

Touya knew how to be patient, whether or not anyone else believed it of him. He waited for the bath sounds to be quieted, and light footsteps in the hall, and Sakura's door twice; he even waited for Yue to come downstairs again, and only _then_ did he take the opportunity to make a further nuisance of himself.

Yue was sitting on the sofa with his wings hunched defensively forward, sheltering himself from Touya's eyes, even though Touya had already had his evening's laugh; Touya grinned to himself and ruffled his fingertips through Yue's feathers.

The moon-angel was still sulking; he shifted his wing away from Touya's fingers, and kept silently working a tangled plastic clip out of his hair.

"Transform," Touya suggested. "Yuki's hair is short; they'll fall out."

"Our clothing shifts with us," Yue said. "When you put them in my hair, they become something I am wearing. And I am _not_ 'sleeping' with these in my hair."

Touya couldn't help laughing at the injured dignity in his voice, and reached past his wings to begin gently separating out the plastic clips. "Let me," he said. "You can't see what you're doing; you don't want to get the springs caught in your hair."

"...And since this _is_ your fault to begin with..."

One thing that Yue and Yukito had in common was the tendency to remember things long past the point where most people would have let them go. All in all, though, Touya somewhat preferred dealing with Yue's version of it; Yukito always smiled and forgave him -- and saved up the karma he felt Touya deserved, and sprang the payback on him with elaborate teases at unexpected moments and in profoundly embarrassing ways. Yukito's blithe sense of humor was a double-edged sword; Touya was often glad Yue hadn't mastered the art of teasing, because he suspected he wouldn't have had a chance of surviving them both.

Touya had also learned how to take advantage of some parts of his lover's inhumanity -- Yue couldn't continue to stay vexed for very long with someone who was preening his feathers and smoothing his hair. Yukito was also rather susceptible to cuddling, but Yukito was more creative in his retorts.

And Touya never minded the opportunity to run his hands through Yue's wings, or his hair. He never admitted it aloud to either of them, but sometimes he teased Yue simply to ruffle his feathers, to have the excuse to smooth them soft and settled again.

...Something was playing a muffled but unbelievably cute little jingle. Touya looked over the side of the sofa; it was coming from inside Sakura's purse.

Yue tilted his head against the curve of Touya's hand when he looked up with the silent question in his eyes; Touya grinned at the success of his stratagem so far, and continued gently untangling the hairclips. "Cell phone," he said, in answer to that silent question. "They can leave a message; let's let her sleep." _And let's take advantage of a little privacy too..._

"Mmm..." Yue let his eyes drift half-shut, enjoying Touya's gentle attentiveness nearly as much as he'd been embarrassed by the teasing earlier. 

Ten seconds after Sakura's cell phone stopped ringing, the Kinomoto house's phone started. Five rings later, Shaoran's panicked voice came on over the answering machine. "Touya? Dammit, Touya, Sakura's not answering her phone; where the hell are you? Is something going wrong? Should I get Kero to--"

Touya didn't have magical cards to summon a cordless handset from across the room. He did, however, have a soccer player's reflexes; he went straight over the back of the sofa, rolled, and came up with the handset in less than three seconds. 

"For Pete's sake, brat, she's not answering because she's gone to sleep already! ...Yes, _asleep._ In her room. Without her phone. --Yes, I'm _sure_ there's nothing sorcerous blocking off her room in some black hole dimension; I was just listening to the phone ring in her purse!"

Shaoran must have said something new-father-panicked and unwise about Touya's lack of ability to sense magical fields anymore, because Yue heard the plastic of the phone creak with the sudden increase of Touya's grip.

_"Why, you snotfaced little punk--! _I'm damn well capable of taking care of _my own little sister_ for a _week _without interference from you _or_ your--"

Yue closed his eyes tightly, made a desperate internal plea, plucked the phone out of Touya's hands, and turned over his consciousness to his other self.

"It's all right, both of you," Yukito's voice said cheerfully into the phone. "Shaoran-kun, Sakura-chan's fine. We can feel their hearts from here. They're both sleeping; please don't make us disturb her. Of course To-ya's been teasing us all, but he's done a perfectly fine job of taking care of her this evening, and he's even going to make her pancakes tomorrow morning. _Without_ the black fishnet stockings on, as an extra special gesture..." 

Still with his eyes closed tightly, Yue wished that he was physically capable of glaring at his other self, because he had to hold the phone away from his head as Shaoran loudly demanded what Touya _was _going to be wearing if he was so emphatically _not_ wearing things. Almost in unison, Touya toppled over face-first into the sofa cushions, muttering something near-incoherent about "how the hell does he make _not_ wearing fishnets sound even kinkier than _wearing_ them?"

"...Yes, yes, but you see, he's _not_ wearing the fishnets now, so it's all right..."

Touya could hear Shaoran's baffled outrage even several feet away from the phone: "But what was he doing with fishnets in the _first _place?"

Yue held the phone as far from himself as he could manage, huddled with his wings over his head defensively, even as Yukito said with blithe enthusiasm, "Well, you see, there was this _adorable_ little black satin maid's outfit at a late-night rental store that..."

Touya snatched the phone from Yue desperately. "She'll talk to you _tomorrow,_" he said, and hung up.

"...That I couldn't manage to talk him into wearing, of course," Yukito said to empty air, his voice brimming with mischief. "To-ya, you could have let me finish! ...Yes, Yue, I'm done now, thank you."

Yue buried his face in both hands, wings still huddled over his head. Touya sighed, and flopped back down next to Yue on the couch. "I don't know _which_ of us he was playing with there..."

The phone started ringing again. Touya and Yue looked at it, and then at each other. Touya climbed back over the couch, fumbled around under the table which held the phone, and the phone went silent a moment before he reemerged brandishing the phone cable.

"There," he said, tossing the cable aside. "No more interruptions." He slid down the back of the sofa to settle beside Yue, and murmured into his ear, "So where were we...?"

"You were ridding my head of those," Yue reminded him flatly, pointing at the handful of pink plastic hairclips on the table as though they were a particularly foul infestation of contagious vermin.

"Oh... right."

Touya let the 'de-lousing' process linger on longer than was strictly necessary; some of the clips had gotten themselves intertangled with the long, silk-fine strands of Yue's hair, and it took care to work them free without pulling. Others he simply lingered over because he could, letting his breath warm Yue's throat, letting his fingertips brush gently through the roots of his hair. Once the braids' anchors were removed, it took more time to work the braids themselves out of his hair; Yue had fallen half asleep by the time he finished with that, and didn't resist when Touya lifted him into his lap, settled his wings over the arm of the sofa to keep them out of harm's way, and tilted Yue's head against his shoulder in order to keep stroking his hair.

"...you manipulative tease..."

Touya grinned and brushed a kiss against the crown of Yue's head. "I thought that was why you loved me."

"No," Yue murmured sleepily. "I love you because... even when you tease until someone wants to scream, I can always hear you saying 'I love you' with every moment of it. I can't begin to comprehend _how_ you make the infliction of writhing misery into an expression of love, but it's enough to know that you _do_ make it so. ...Thank you, by the way. The ridiculous hair clips did help to make my mistress feel less self-conscious about her own condition." 

"Good," Touya said, with a smile.

A moment later, Yue lifted his head enough to glare up at him. "And don't _ever_ do it again, since the point has already been made!"

Touya laughed himself light-headed, wheezing with the attempt to breathe deeply around his own hilarity and Yue's slight but solid weight against his chest. His vexation faintly visible through the calm, Yue shifted in Touya's arms so that he could arch a wing forward, hiding his face from his chortling lover like a swan settling its head beneath its wings to sleep.

With a soft sound of appreciation, Touya brushed his fingertips over the soft white feathers, and said, "You're so damn beautiful..." He cupped a hand to the taut curve of Yue's wing and tugged gently, the other hand rubbing his back just between the wings, where their weight sometimes made his back ache with tension. 

After a moment, the rigidity of Yue's resistance softened, and he shifted his wing to arch about Touya as well, sheltering them both in their private snow-white world. Touya smiled and kissed him, softly, lingeringly, and Yue reached up to cup his hand against the curve of Touya's throat, admiring the warm and human strength of him. He arched his back awkwardly to shift himself closer, the other wing catching on the arm of the sofa; Touya chuckled.

"There's got to be someplace better to do this." Touya slipped one arm about Yue's waist and the other behind his knees, lifting him almost effortlessly, and looking around the house to try to think of better options. "Not next door to the monster; the basement's too full of bookshelves... too cold out on the balcony..."

In a voiceless but unarguable insistence, Yue tightened his arms around Touya's shoulders and kissed him again; it overrode Touya's lingering attempt at practicality. The dark-haired young man made an incoherent sound, shoving the coffee table aside with one foot and sinking to his knees, then lying down and bringing Yue on top of him so that he could stretch his wings. Sometimes, at the heights of their mutual passion, Yue forgot for a few moments that he wasn't flying; sometimes Touya forgot it too.

Yukito was more expressive and irrepressible, but in many ways he was also gentler. Once a person broke the shell of Yue's self-restraint, he was a fierce creature, proud and wild as a hawk, and almost silent in his passions, save for the rustle of his wings. Once in a while, on fairly rare occasions, Touya had heard him cry out in pleasure, but far more often their joining was as silent as wild creatures', and very unlike the way his laughing and expressive Yukito enjoyed their mutual loveplay.

_Tonight with the monster here,_ Touya thought with the last shreds of his rationality, _quiet would be good_ -- and then he lost even that thought in the sensation of Yue's hands tangled in his shirt, and Yue's lips and teeth tearing the buttons loose. His shirt ended up elbowed under the sofa somehow, and Yue's clothing got kicked toward the coffeetable, and Touya bit his lip hard when Yue's hands slipped into his jeans...

...and then his hands froze motionless; Touya took a sharp frustrated breath to demand why, and then he heard the footsteps on the stairs too.

Humming to herself softly, Sakura walked down the stairs and into the kitchen; over the mad panicked pounding of his own heart, Touya heard the clink of a bowl and dishware, a drawer opening, the freezer door -- and a giggle: "Chocolate chip mint! Oh, yum..."

Frozen motionless and afraid even his heartbeat was loud enough to give them away, Touya stared helplessly up at Yue, who looked as baffled and borderline-panicstricken as he himself felt. He debated clutching at their discarded clothing, but then she _would_ hear them, and...

...a scoop of ice cream dropped into the bowl, and some syrup on top, and she rinsed the ice cream scoop so that it wouldn't get sticky, and then she set it in the dish drainer with a small clink, and Touya shut his eyes and silently prayed she'd stop cleaning up and take her ice cream back to her bedroom before he snapped and started laughing hysterically at the absurdity of it all. 

Sakura's footsteps traced a path back toward the stairs... and then paused, and there was a rustle as she bent to pick something up...

...and with Touya's cast-off, buttons-torn-away shirt in her hands, she looked past the edge of the sofa at the tangle of the two of them.

After two frozen seconds, she dropped both the shirt and the bowl, her face flaming scarlet: "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry -- I -- oh goodness -- oh, and the ice cream too -- oh, _no..._ I'm so sorry...!" 

"I spilled some tea," Touya said desperately, even as he clawed at Yue's silks and flung a handful of fabric over them both so that it might not be _quite_ so obvious that her brother was half naked and her moon guardian was wearing nothing but his hair and his _very _carefully poised wings. "Got it all over him. --Over us. Didn't want it to burn... um... so that's why... our... um... clothes..."

"Oh," Sakura said, blankly. "Oh, that's good. I mean... no, that's bad, I mean I hope you're all right, I mean... how much got spilled...? There aren't... er...  broken pieces of... teacups, or something... are there...?"

"It's fine," Touya managed in a half strangled voice. "We're fine, the tea set's fine. Don't worry about us."

"That's good," Sakura said, utterly dazed. "I think. Isn't it? --Anyway, I _didn't_ mean to interrupt you! I... um... need to clean up the ice cream... I should... --the mop's in the closet, right...?"

_"No!"_ Touya yelped. "That is -- I'll be cleaning up the -- er -- tea, and -- I'll take care of it, you go rest... um... I'll bring you some more ice cream... just... uh... go _upstairs_...?"

"..._Oh!_" Still blushing bright crimson, Sakura nodded so vigorously Touya wondered why her head hadn't fallen off, and she took a couple faltering backwards steps toward the stairs, groping blind for the railing. "Right! I'll... um... go upstairs! --Fast! _--Really_ fast! Um. Right--!"

She turned around and took the stairs as quickly as she could possibly manage in her condition, and a few seconds later her bedroom door shut loudly. Even from the living room, Touya and Yue both heard her miserable wail: "_Sakura-chan no BAKA!_"

Touya couldn't fight it off any longer; he burst into peals of near-hysterical laughter, clutching at the couch and methodically beating his head against the pillows. 

"Oh my _God...!_ God, that settles it, next time we pick a _room_ with a _DOOR_ and we _stay there_, we... oh, hell, that poor kid...!" He streaked his arm across his face to scrub away the laugh-tears, and gasped, "I'll get her some ice cream..."

"No, I will," Yue said, in a voice distorted almost to the verge of unrecognizability, thick with self-loathing. 

The sound of it startled Touya out of his hysterics; he took a careful breath and fought back the last of the mad giggles, and reached over to touch his lover's shoulder lightly. "Yue...?"

Huddled in a pool of moonlight-hued silk and his hair, he whispered savagely, "This is my fault. _Not_ hers."

"Of course it's not her fault," Touya said, "but don't go beating yourself up too badly; it was certainly taking two of us to tango back there."

"You tried to suggest... discretion. I was... not thinking clearly, I was a selfish stubborn fool who wished to thwart you a bit, for nothing but pettiness, and..." Yue shook his head slightly, sharply, and gathered the puddle of his discarded clothing close. "I'm sure she won't want to see my face. I couldn't blame her. Her sworn servant, her own guardian, too lost in his own lust even to notice her... Tell Yukito to take her some ice cream; I'm sure she won't want to see me."

"Yue--"

But Yue had already furled his wings around himself; when the flare of his power had faded, Yukito was sitting in the middle of the living room floor blinking in absolute bewilderment. "What just happened...? Yue's been completely blocking me, and he's not even speaking now."

"How long has he been blocking you?" Touya asked, with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Yukito looked a little sheepish. "I heard the phone call, of course, but he was still irritated that I'd made him look in a mirror to show me his hair and then I'd laughed at him, so... he shut me out for playing with poor Shaoran-kun; what's happened since then?"

Touya opened his mouth to try to explain, closed it, thought hard, tried again, then thwacked the palm of his hand into his forehead with a groan. "I'm going to take the monster a new bowl of ice cream; Yue and I kind of, er, surprised her into dropping the last one. I'll tell you the rest of it afterwards..."

Yukito looked over at the spilled bowl of ice cream, and Touya's dropped shirt, and the fact that it had apparently been more than half torn off of him; he picked up a stray button and tossed and caught it lightly. "And he thinks _I'm_ the scandalous one?"

"There were, er, circumstances," Touya said, a little lamely. "Anyway. Emergency ice cream and apology delivery. Be right back." He scooped up his shirt and shoved his arms through the holes, making a halfhearted attempt at approximately straightening it as he headed toward the kitchen, the freezer, and some nice cold water he could shove his hands under and think icy and extremely _non_-arousing thoughts about for a few minutes.


	4. ch 4: Don't cry over spilled ice cream

**Promises to Keep, Chapter 4  
"Don't cry over spilled ice cream" **

(^^;; Sorry for the delay; real life kinda bit me in the tail last week, and after I recovered from the nervous breakdown I spent a sizable chunk of the weekend hauling boxes. Small ramble here: My friend moved to another city this weekend. He suggested everyone helping pack some clothes so we could sleep over before making the three and a half hour drive back to our hometown. The exact phrase being tossed around in our group was "We can sleep over and come back Sunday." I thought this meant "leave around 9 or 10 on Sunday and get back sometime shortly after lunch", not "leave around 6:30 p.m. and get back around 10:30 p.m." -- but on the bright side, I did get another chapter finished whilst waiting for everyone to decide it really was time to get back on the road...)

Yukito woke the next morning to the delicious smell of freshly cooking pancakes. He and Touya had spent an extraordinarily quiet night; Touya had been too embarrassed by the experience to go beyond an apologetic kiss, a cuddle, and a repeatedly mumbled resolution that there had to be a soundproof area somewhere in the house. It had been even quieter 'inside'; for the past several years Yue had left a quiet sort of light in the back of his mind, now that he no longer needed to conceal every part of his existence. Yue only hid himself so utterly and completely when he was upset; and Yukito had come to know Yue well enough to understand that the guardian was one of the most sensitive creatures ever to walk the earth. The admirable _and_ frustrating part of it was that Yue had very high standards -- both for himself and for everyone else. He was almost too unremittingly levelhanded; it suited his nature as the Judge, and yet sometimes Yukito wished his other self could more easily smile and forgive people their frailties, including his own.

By the time he'd dressed and washed the sleep out of his eyes and padded downstairs, the pancakes were almost ready to be delivered. Touya reacted to the sound of footsteps on the stairs as though they were gunshots, hunching his shoulders and looking around sharply through sheer traumatized reflex; Yukito laughed at him and stole a strawberry from the dish, then licked his fingers.

"You don't need to fear being caught with pancakes _nearly_ as much as being caught molesti-"

"I know, I know," Touya muttered. He slid another pancake onto the stack, then reached over and tapped a knuckle against Yukito's temple lightly. "Anything from your 'neighbor' in there?"

"No," Yukito admitted with a sigh, polishing his glasses rather pointlessly on the hem of his shirt. "Lights out, door locked, no trespassing."

"She's going to be traumatized with the thought that he's angry with her," Touya said with a groan. "Can you fake him enough to convince her he's just angry with himself and maybe me?"

Yukito blinked at Touya, and then put a hand over his mouth to muffle giggles. "You know I wouldn't last ten seconds!" He pulled his glasses down his nose and glowered over them mock-severely, doing an impression of Yue-as-stern-schoolmaster, and said in a wobbly attempt at a deeper voice, "Would _you_ believe it if I tried this on you?"

"Not a chance in hell," Touya said, with half-lidded eyes.

"Besides, think of all the trauma I could inflict on his reputation if I _could_ impersonate him!" Back to his own voice, Yukito admitted sheepishly, "I couldn't resist. I'd get him into all _sorts_ of embarrassing situations just to watch him blush; you know I would. Let's go take Sakura-chan her pancakes before they get cold."

"Yep, that's you," Touya said. "Always thinking with your stomach."

With an entirely too sweet and innocent smile, Yukito replied, "Well, that's several inches higher than what _you're_ always thinking with, so..."

Touya fought with himself and lost. He reached over for the can of whipped cream and started shaking it with a purposeful light in his eyes.

Yukito scooped up a plate full of pancakes and held it up as a shield from the whipped cream can, laughing.

The pancakes were quite liberally, and quite erratically, decorated with whipped cream by the time the two of them knocked on Sakura's door to make their penitence. So was Yukito's head and the collar of Touya's shirt, but they'd tried to clean up the evidence at least a little bit before presenting themselves. Then Sakura opened the door, and her eyes widened as she took in their state of mutual dishevelment.

"Whipped cream...?"

Touya felt his face burning, and Yukito gave an extremely sheepish little chuckle. "I think he was trying to give me bunny ears, except the whipped cream lacked a little something in the structural integrity department."

"Oh!" Sakura said, in a far too relieved voice. "Is that all? Oh, I see..."

Touya wished he could crawl into a hole somewhere; Yukito scratched behind an ear a little. "All the clothes stayed on this morning, honestly," he assured her. "Speaking of which, what are you doing up? We can't give you breakfast in bed if you're not in bed, can we?"

"...Right!" With a giggle, Sakura sat on the edge of her bed and lay down to wriggle under the covers again; then she looked at the soft blanket-covered hill made by the bulge of her middle and sighed. "This part isn't going to work too well, is it."

"Let me help you sit up," Yukito said, and then looked over at Touya with a sparkle of mischief in his eyes. "And he can kneel at your side and serve you with his fingers like a Roman empress' devoted servant! I can put a toga on him since he's so stubbornly refusing the fishnets, and you've got a convenient sheet right here--"

_"No!"_ the siblings yelped in soprano-and-baritone unison.

"Ah, sibling love," Yukito said, grinning. "How admirable, two souls with their thoughts in such perfect harmony..."

One of Touya's eyebrows was twitching. "Damn, I knew I should've brought more whipped cream along."

"Of course you should have," Yukito replied, with enthusiasm. "Whipped cream makes _everything _better!"

Sakura turned bright pink and buried her face in her pillow, making strangled choking sounds; Touya very carefully set the plate of pancakes down before he smacked Yukito across the head.

"Thanks _so_ much for reminding her of last night!"

"I suppose you're right," Yukito mused, with a finger to his lips. "I don't think whipped cream would do much for 'hot tea.' --But it does wonders for everything else! Particularly pancakes. And hot chocolate. Which you're going to make as soon as she gets done with the pancakes, in order to apologize for embarrassing her again..."

"_Who_ was embarrassing her this time?!"

"Pancakes!" Sakura squeaked, still bright pink and clutching her pillow like a sanity preserver. "I'd like the pancakes while they're still warm and in one piece and nobody's dumped them on anybody's head, please...?"

Touya picked up the plate and held it out for her, still grumbling under his breath at his cheerfully unrepentant lover; Yukito was quite gently assiduous in helping Sakura sit up in bed, fluffing the pillow and settling it into the small of her back, then handing her the silverware.

She looked at him anxiously, with a little worry-wrinkle between her brows. "Aren't you having pancakes too?"

"Later," Yukito said.

"Gotta feed the monsters first, after all; they get dangerous when they're hungry," Touya muttered under his breath, with a quirk at the corner of his mouth which looked suspiciously as though it was struggling not to be a grin.

"Excuse me a moment, Sakura-chan," Yukito said, quite politely, and then turned around and smacked Touya across the head with a stuffed animal grabbed from Sakura's headboard. "You _promised,_ you overgrown lout!"

"Ow! All right, all right, I surrender..."

And so Sakura ate her pancakes, and then insisted on coming downstairs and cooking more pancakes for them to eat as a thank-you. Under Yukito's watchful gaze, Touya didn't even tease her about her cooking, and even volunteered to wash the dishes.

Sitting on the couch with her feet propped up on the table, Sakura looked over at Yukito with the worry-wrinkle in her brows again. "Yukito-san... I... um... did I make Yue-san angry?"

_Here it is, then._ Yukito sighed a little, and smiled for her, and reached over to take her hand between his. "No, you didn't."

In a very tiny voice, she said, "But he's... he's all closed up inside somewhere, and... usually he only does that when he's angry or upset..."

"I know," Yukito said. "But I guarantee that he's not angry with _you_. He's just angry with himself."

Her eyes widened in immediate distress. "But then I _did_ make him angry!"

"No, monster, he did that all by himself," Touya said from the kitchen.

"But... it's my fault; if I hadn't come down and interrupted you--" her face pinked noticeably, but she gulped hard and forged on. "If I hadn't interrupted your, er, private time, then you wouldn't have gotten startled and burned anyone with tea trying to hide what you were, um, doing, and then..."

Yukito made a small choking sound; Touya was suddenly very very busy with the dishes, and he said in a half strangled voice, "That's not exactly how it went... oh, never mind."

"Yukito-san? Is he _very_ angry...?"

"It's not your fault, Sakura-chan," Yukito said.

After so many years of living around Yukito's gentleness, she knew how to hear through that; with a small sound of misery, she buried her face in both hands. "I'm so, so sorry...! I promise I'll knock -- er, um, the living room doesn't have a door, but... I can knock on the stairs or..."

"It's _all right,_ Sakura-chan," Yukito said, and gave a stern internal call. 

_Yue, if you're listening at all, this would be a good time to have the decency to speak to her. Of course, if you're just wallowing in self-loathing all locked away in your own little homemade hell, you're probably too self-absorbed to notice that..._

There was no reply; Yukito hadn't expected one, but he'd rather hoped there might have been. He suggested as gently as he could, "You could summon him. I don't mind."

_I'd be relieved in fact. It's rather disconcerting to have someone sulking with a silence that echoes _this _loudly in the back of my head._

Sakura thought about it for a minute, then shook her head. "I don't want to force him," she said. "It's already my fault he's upset..."

Yukito glanced toward the kitchen and Touya, silently begging for help; Touya gave a small helpless shrug, and put down the dishes to walk over and scruffle Sakura's hair a little.

"Don't worry about it, monster," Touya mumbled. "We should've found a room somewhere. We just weren't thinking very clearly."

"But if I weren't here, you wouldn't have to wor-"

Touya cut that one off with a fierce hug. "Cut that out right now," he said. "We love you and we're glad to have you, got it? "

Sakura gave an enormous sigh and hugged her brother back, but didn't respond, and her pretty face was still creased with worry.

When Tomoyo arrived for their long-planned Christmas shopping spree, her first reaction to the sight of Sakura sitting on the sofa was a croon of absolute delight. Even as the door opened, she already had her camcorder at her shoulder, of course.

"Sakura-chan! Oh, look at you - you're getting so big! My sweet Sakura-chan, growing so radiant with your baby... see, I _told_ you that you would be perfectly beautiful! Just look how you're blossoming now; it's enough to make an almost-aunt-to-be cry...!"

"You saw her last week," Touya said drily, arms crossed.

"And look how she's blossomed even since then!" Tomoyo replied, eternally delighted by everything to do with her cousin.

But Sakura was too distracted by her worries to blush and protest; instead, she said, "Tomoyo-chan, can I ask you something?"

"Anything," Tomoyo said immediately, hurrying over to sit at her side. "What's wrong...?"

"Yue-san is angry, and it's my fault, and I don't know what to do -- you always know what to say to people, Tomoyo-chan..."

Tomoyo blinked in puzzlement. "How could it _possibly_ be your fault, Sakura-chan?"

Yukito bit his lip to keep from laughing. _Tomoyo-chan has always had that one particular blind spot... although in this case she's right, but that's not going to help reassure Sakura-chan at the moment._ Aloud, he managed, "It's not Sakura's fault; it's not really anyone's fault, just a matter of awkward timing."

"Tell me," Tomoyo said.

All three of them looked at each other, and started blushing and stammering and squirming; somehow they got approximately through the story, although with several different versions about the involvement of the hypothetical hot tea, and Tomoyo was blushing a little too by the end of it.

"So now Yue-san is too embarrassed to face Sakura-chan, and Sakura-chan is worried that he's angry with her?" Tomoyo asked.

Three heads nodded; Tomoyo considered for a moment, then reached over and took Yukito's hand and said, "Can we talk by ourselves for a moment, Tsukishiro-san?"

He obediently followed the young woman across the room so that they could have a bit more privacy; even grown up, Tomoyo was delicate and graceful and still a bit shorter than Yukito's lanky height, and so he bent towards her slightly.

"I'm afraid I'm about to say some very harsh things, Tsukishiro-san," she murmured. "I hope you both may forgive me."

"I don't doubt that we will, since we most likely need to hear them," he replied, and closed his eyes to concentrate on listening as 'loudly' as he could.

Tomoyo leaned close to his ear and spoke with crisply precise diction. "Is this how Yue the Judge has always served his masters?" she asked. "By abandoning them precisely when his masters need him most? And over nothing but his own ridiculous pride, at that?"

Yukito's body went taut as a bowstring suddenly, and it wasn't from his own reaction; there was a wordless roil of outraged denial from that dark corner in his mind, but Yukito kept his eyes closed and his mind still, refusing to stop listening to Tomoyo's every word until Yue himself responded.

"Sakura-chan is _not_ to use her powers unless it's critically necessary now," Tomoyo said. "Li-kun and Kero-chan are hundreds of miles away; in a magical emergency, they couldn't arrive quickly enough. Her father has just enough of Clow's power to see spirits, and even he isn't here. Her brother gave all his magic to _you_ and begged _you_ to keep her safe because he no longer could. But rather than stay and watch over her despite your embarrassment, you go and sulk in the corner of Yukito-san's mind and abandon her to anything that might sense her weakness and isolation now? Yukito-san is not her guardian; he feels the moon but he cannot fight with it. He is not the wielder of the power which swore itself to protect her in exchange for the strength to continue living. How petty, to abandon that sacred trust even for a moment, out of embarrassment and anger at what was your own failing to begin with -- what would Clow say to you if he knew of this...?"

From across the room, Sakura gasped when Yukito shuddered as though convulsing; he barely had time to cry out in pain before Yue tore his way free, staggered across the room, and collapsed at her feet in utter self-abasement. He knelt with his head bowed to the floor, his wings furled tight to his spine, trembling all over, unable even to speak.

Very nearly as upset as he was, Sakura slid awkwardly off the couch and gathered him close, whispering frantic and near incoherent reassurances into his hair. Yue never spoke aloud, but Sakura's words had the sound and rhythm of replies; Touya got up and walked over to stand by Tomoyo, so that he wouldn't accidentally overhear anything that might make it worse.

"What did you say to him?" Touya asked, warily impressed.

"Sakura-chan is too kind to call him against his will, or to point out certain painful truths," Tomoyo replied quite calmly. "I fear I am not as kind a person as Sakura-chan is."

Touya blinked. "Remind me _never_ to tick you off, Tomoyo-chan."

Across the room, Sakura was holding Yue's face between her hands, gentle but fierce; she'd forgotten to speak aloud some time ago, despite her deep caution about trying to avoid using magic in front of her brother lest she remind him of what he'd lost. 

Yue's face was still tortured, and streaked with silent tears; Sakura bent close enough to kiss the tears from his cheeks, gentle as a mother, and then drew him into her arms again, and rocked him back and forth, assuring him of her complete love and forgiveness.

After a moment, with unshed tears thick in her own voice, Sakura asked, "Oniichan? Please... help me tell him it's not his fault..."

Touya sighed deeply, and walked over and sat crosslegged on the floor beside them; he put one arm around each of them, and said in a husky undertone, "You're both way too sensitive, you know. One gets upset and that upsets the other one and that makes the first one more upset, and around it goes... it's okay, honestly. We got embarrassed. We're short one bowl of ice cream. That's all. It's okay, really, both of you..."

"...Don't say that!" Sakura said; Touya blinked in startlement, and then realized she'd been replying to Yue. "Of course I wanted to see you; I want to see you both! And I want you to have your own life _aside_ from being my guardian. You love my big brother. Both of you do. Of course you want to be with him when you can. I understand that; I know what it's like to be in love. It's really, truly all right, Yue-san. I promise. I'll never, ever be angry because you love my brother. I'll always be happy for you both."

"Thank you," Yue whispered, hoarsely, the first words he'd spoken since the night before.

Sakura shook her head a little, caught between laughing and crying. "Don't thank me; how could I not be happy when you're happy? You're my precious Yue-san, and I love oniichan even when he teases a lot too much, and you make each other whole. You need each other. I'm glad you have each other. And even if it's your job that you're my guardian, _everyone_ has time off work! Evenings, weekends, vacation time -- honestly. Didn't Clow-san ever explain to you about the fair-labor laws?"

Touya choked, snorted, and burst out laughing.

"I'm _serious!_" Sakura protested. "Just because Yue-san and Kero-chan are magic doesn't mean they're not people too! ..._will_ you stop laughing at me already?"

"I love you, brat," Touya said, still laughing. "We all love you. And that's just part of why."

"I still feel that I do not deserve your forgiveness," Yue whispered. "But I am grateful to have it, even unearned."

"Yue-san no baka," Sakura said, "you don't need my forgiveness for being in love with oniichan!"

"But we can both choose more discreet places to act on it," Touya said, grinning. "So everybody's okay again?"

Yue nodded faintly, and crumpled forward; Yukito landed on his hands and knees on the floor, gasping. Touya caught him before he could fall flat on his face.

"Did he hurt you with that?"

"A little," Yukito said, panting with the lingering  remnant of pain. "He's not... not usually so abrupt..."

Touya sighed, and kissed Yukito's forehead lightly. "How many hundreds of years old, but he still acts like a brat some days..."

"Wrong time of the month, I guess," Yukito said, with a grin that wobbled on the verge of manic. 

Tomoyo and Sakura traded a Look, and both of them reached over to smack him on the head in unison.

"Isn't it true though?" Yukito asked wryly, both hands up to try to fend off the assault from the women in the room. "I like full moons better myself; I'm sure that's magnified for him. It's in the moon's nature to be... well, not mercurial, necessarily, but..."

"Bipolar?" Touya suggested far too blandly. "Or are you just saying you have PMS your entire life?"

Yukito stuck out his tongue at his lover. "Bipolar does suit it, though," he said. "Just on a more regular cycle." 

Touya took a breath to make a comment, saw Sakura and Tomoyo ball up their fists in unison, and wisely thought the better of it, turning his attention to steadying Yukito more devotedly than was strictly necessary.

With Touya's support, Yukito sat up again, rather gingerly, fingertips against still-throbbing temples. "I've gotten used to it, because it's my nature to be the one who _does_ get used to things," he said, still carefully catching his breath from the abrupt transformations. "I'm the bright side of his moon; in a way I can't help that, because I was made to be the shining and happy one... and yet all the same I wish he would let himself understand that he could learn the same sort of balance... if he wasn't so busy suffering through everything that happens." Then he glanced over with a glimmer of a mischievous grin tugging at his lips. "By the way, Tomoyo-chan -- thank you very much. I hadn't thought of trying _that_ particular tactic to shake him out of it."

"Any time, Tsukishiro-san," Tomoyo said, quite demurely. "Are you feeling well enough to come Christmas shopping with us, or would you rather rest a bit?"

"I'm going where Sakura-chan goes," Yukito said, with a somewhat breathless chuckle. "I _was_ listening to that speech too, you realize!"

Tomoyo put a hand over his gently, her eyes anxious. "I didn't mean it for you."

"I understand," Yukito said. "But truth is truth, after all."

"What speech?" Sakura asked, a bit puzzled. "Tomoyo-chan, what did you say to Yue-san?"

"I simply reminded him of a couple of promises he needed to keep," Tomoyo replied, and moved to set Sakura's hands on her shoulders and her own hands on what remained of Sakura's waist. "Come on, let's help you up, Sakura-chan; we've got a fair amount of ground to cover today!"

(Next time: less angst and more cute fuzzies during the shopping spree at the mall! I've got half of it written already, so I can promise that fairly safely... O-tanoshimi ni!)


	5. ch 5: Tactical assault on the mall

**Promises to Keep, Chapter 5  
"Tactical assault on the mall" **

(cute fuzzies, as promised! ^_~ Thanks for the reviews, y'all!)

Christmas shopping was rather complicated around the Kinomoto family. Aside from the fact that Sakura's own advanced pregnancy was tiring for her, there were the intricacies of who could be shopped for in front of whom. Even Tomoyo looked a bit boggled by Sakura's attempt at puzzling through the details.

"I used to be able to go shopping for Mother with oniichan, but now he can't see her anymore, so I can't go shopping for her when I don't know whether or not she's watching, and Father could tell me but he's _not_ here, and that makes it easier to shop for him but harder to shop for her, and Yue-san could tell me except for the fact that I still need to shop for him too; I've gotten my present for Yukito-san but Yukito-san could never see Mother the way oniichan could, so he couldn't help me either -- and then there's the part of the family that doesn't like to see Father but doesn't mind oniichan and me, except that most of them don't know about oniichan and Yukito-san, and _none_ of them know about Yue-san of course, but Yue-san told me that he would like to find a gift for Grandfather to pay his respects to the family's eldest, and..."

Tomoyo gamely took out a notepad and started graphing who could know what about whose gifts. By the time they arrived at the mall, Tomoyo had taken charge of martialling the troops' schedule for the afternoon.

"...So Yue-san will come with us for a while, and then we'll split up so that Sakura-chan can shop for Touya-san and Yue-san, and then we'll meet back at the food court at three p.m., and then Yukito-san will have his turn with us. And then I think we've got all the options covered."

Yukito's eyes had that peculiar internal-conversation lack of focus. "...He doesn't say so, but I think he's worried about whether people will notice him. As in, whether they'll notice we're not human."

"So he likes odd contacts or something," Touya said. "With the hair to stare at, I doubt anyone's going to be looking that closely at his eyes anyway. --Tell him he's just our shy little shrinking violet and see whether he'll come out to slap me across the head," he added, grinning.

A little stiffly, as though struggling through the internal debate, Yukito started to shrug off his overcoat too. 

"Yuki? You'll get cold if you leave that here," Touya said.

"But I'm not the one who's going," he said, "and if they stare at his hair, they'll _definitely _stare at his clothes."

Tomoyo blinked in absolute bewilderment. "But his clothes are beautiful!"

"Yes, but people don't usually wear clothing like that to the mall, Tomoyo-chan," Yukito said very gently. "Actually, ladies, speaking of which -- if you'll excuse me for a few minutes--" and he put his hands to the buttons of his shirt.

Sakura grabbed Tomoyo's elbow and they both did a hasty about-face, staring fixedly _away_ from the van. "Tomoyo-chan," Sakura said in an undertone, "for Yue-san's sake, _please_ tell me you have an extra ponytail holder in your purse. And that it's _not_ Hello Kitty."

Tomoyo dug around in her purse and came up with three plain soft ponytailers, one maroon and two gray. "Hello Kitty?" she asked.

"It's a long story..."

Yukito's clothing was a little short on Yue, too tight in some places and too loose in others, but the combination of Yukito's sweater and the masking of his long overcoat made it look plausible enough. Tomoyo expertly looped up Yue's hair and fastened it at a few places and suddenly his hair would hide reasonably well down the back of Yukito's sweater, although Yue kept moving his head oddly, unaccustomed to the shifted balance of its weight.

"Ready?" Sakura asked encouragingly, putting a hand through his; Touya took his other hand, and they both looked at him. 

Yue ducked his head, embarrassed by their loving, anxious attention, and Sakura stroked the back of his hand in an attempt at reassurance.

"I think it'll be fine, Yue-san, really. I think you might like it! But if you don't want to do this, then I don't want to ask it of you..."

"Let's go," Tomoyo said crisply, before their tangled collection of embarrassment and shyness and mutual concern could escalate. "We have a schedule to keep, after all, and the mall waits for no one!" She put her arm through Sakura's and tugged towards the entrance.

Yue had watched the modern world through Yukito's eyes, so he wasn't surprised by the tall building with the ten floors of shops and galleries; what unsettled him was that this was one of _very_ few times that _he'd_ been the one walking around. He took his task as a guardian seriously enough when Li and Kero were also present; in their absence, he was almost hypervigilant, wary of anything that might have the ability to endanger either his disguise or Sakura's safety. Even with his wings magically hidden, he was silent and trembling with tension, his knuckles white with the pressure of his grip on Sakura's arm.

His tension communicated itself to Sakura, who was desperately anxious to reassure him that it was all right to enjoy himself, and in return her desperation made him even more determined to keep her safe from anything that might harm her, and he urged her to stop and rest whenever she looked uncomfortable or rubbed the hollow of her back to try to ease the strain of the baby's weight. Tomoyo gave up on the pair of them and took Touya's arm to shush him with an elbow in the ribs whenever he started chortling too loudly about what absolute saps they were being. 

And Tomoyo had to shush him twice as vigorously when Sakura and Yue began to earnestly debate the best thing for Yue to offer to Sakura's grandfather -- while standing in front of the stuffed animals shop. 

"But this one looks like you, a little bit," Sakura said, holding up a soft plush angel with swan-white wings. "We could make her a little white outfit like yours, and then Grandfather would know what you look like."

"It's... it's..." He struggled with the thought of disagreeing with his mistress, and finally nerved himself to say very faintly, "It's... not very... dignified..."

"You don't like it?" she asked piteously, and he almost tripped over himself backpedalling.

"It's a perfectly good stuffed fluffy little... er... angel... thing. It's... just... um... a little... extremely... cute. And female..."

Touya made a strangled snerking sound; Tomoyo dug a sharp elbow into his ribs.

"Be nice," she told him primly.

"But he's plenty cute and effeminate-looking!" Touya wheezed. "I think she picked a good one myself..."

Yue shot him a look that could have singed steel.

"No promises broken," Touya said, grinning from ear to ear. "Complimenting her taste and everything. Not teasing her in the slightest!"

"But you're teasing Yue-san," Sakura said unhappily, and put the little angel back on the shelf.

Yue picked it back up again. "You like it," he said. "It made you happy to think of giving it to your grandfather."

"But I don't want to embarrass you..."

"Here," Touya said, and took the little angel, and handed it to Sakura. "You give this one to Mother. I'll give her one that looks like Kero-chan. And we'll help Yue find a gift he thinks is appropriate for him to give to Grandfather."

More than a little wilted, Yue said, "You're saying we _both_ look like plush toys?"

"Oh, poor Yue-san!" Sakura patted his hand gently. "You don't look like a plush toy at all..."

"Let's look at this the other way. What sort of thing do you think Grandfather would like to receive?" Tomoyo asked them all.

Sakura chewed on her bottom lip, thinking hard, and propped her hand in the small of her back in the eternal posture of late pregnancy. "Nadeshiko flowers?" she guessed. "It's so difficult to buy personal things for him, though; we don't know him very well..."

"What do you think he would like to receive from Yue-san in particular, though?" Tomoyo said. "A gift from the moon, a gift that speaks of moonlight..."

Yue's eyes widened, and then he bowed to Tomoyo in the old Western fashion he'd learned centuries earlier, down on one knee with his head bent. 

"You are a very thoughtful young woman," he murmured, oblivious to the stares from the passers-by. "Starting from that place, I know what it is I should give to him; we are unlikely to find such a thing here, though. I will need a frame. And a piece of glass. I can manage the rest."

Blinking enormous green eyes, Sakura looked back and forth between Tomoyo and her guardian. "Huh...?"

Tomoyo was very, very good at wearing the calm and composed face, but Sakura had known her for most of twenty years now, and it was a little reassuring to realize that Tomoyo was a little bit baffled too. Still, she gamely replied, "I'm glad I could help, Yue-san." 

She tapped the end of her pencil against her cheek, looking over the day's battle plan. "Then that's one taken care of -- or at least, as taken-care-of as it gets at the mall, yes?" In response to Yue's nod, Tomoyo went back to strategizing like a military general. "Right. Now, Sakura-chan and I will need some privacy to shop for the boys, but Touya-san will also need some privacy to shop for you-plural, Yue-san, and we're not about to abandon either of you out here because you would be paralyzed and Yukito-san would find a candy store to eat out of business. Therefore, _here's_ what we're going to do..."

Yue didn't do sweatdrops. It wasn't his style. However, the way he was standing there too-pointedly _not_ fidgeting was about as close to a sweatdrop as he was congenitally capable of coming. Sakura was doing sweatdrops for both of them, to balance out the inequity in the universe.

"...So at 2:15 we rendezvous at the central court and trade off _again_ and go shopping with our new partners from 2:20 to 2:55, and then there's the final rendezvous at 3 and Yukito gets his chance to come shopping. So everyone has their plans straight, right?" Tomoyo asked.

Sakura opened her mouth to reply, and had meant for something intelligible to come out, but what she heard herself say was "Huh...?"

"You two go that way," Touya said. "Tomoyo-chan comes with me. We'll call you when we're done. --You both have cell phones, you know."

Tomoyo looked wilted. "But I liked my plan better."

"Because you were going to take the opportunity during all those swaps to ditch us and film Sakura shopping, or because your brain's just naturally more convoluted than a Grecian labyrinth?"

Tomoyo gave a sheepish little laugh. "Well, a little of both actually..."

"How is she supposed to buy something for you when she doesn't know when you're sneaking around videotaping her?"

"I'll close my eyes for that part," Tomoyo replied brightly.

Touya smacked a palm into his forehead, caught a handful of Tomoyo's collar, and started dragging her away. "See you later, monster..."

            *            *            *

About a quarter to three, one of the fake ferns near the central court rustled suspiciously.

Touya said in his ordinary voice, "Tomoyo-chan, I don't know what you think you're-- _ouch!_"

Tomoyo, who had produced a floppy black hat and sunglasses and a very small but high-zoom-factor videocamera from the depths of her purse, resumed her position behind the fake fern. She parted the leaves cautiously, and the camera chirped and whirred as she shifted the zoom and the focus.

In a much quieter although no less exasperated voice, and leaning hard on the fake fern's container to take the weight off his newly kicked ankle, Touya said, "What do you think you're filming this time?"

"Sakura-chan is done shopping for us, isn't she," Tomoyo replied.

Warily, Touya nodded. "So?"

"So you can't possibly scold me for videotaping her while she shops for me, since she's already done!"

"..."

"Hush."

"I didn't say it!" he protested.

"You didn't need to. Now hush."

Touya rolled his eyes and sat down behind the fern, still nursing both his injured ankle and his injured dignity.

Watching intently through the viewfinder of the camera, Tomoyo sighed with bliss at Yue's mute gallantry as he helped Sakura settle herself into a deep soft chair. He knelt at her side, and Tomoyo hoped the microphone's background noise filter was good enough to pick up their conversation.

"You're sure you're all right...?"

"I'm fine," Sakura said, blushing. "It's just that my back hurts from carrying all the extra weight! But I'm perfectly fine; you don't need to worry so, Yue-san."

His silence was just as eloquent as Touya's had been, a few moments earlier. Tomoyo wondered how much conversation the pair of them held without speaking a word aloud.

"...mmph!" Rubbing the snug mound of her belly with a rueful hand, Sakura said, "I think the baby takes after oniichan. Soccer lessons, definitely... that was quite a kick!"

Barely a whisper, Yue said hoarsely, "I feel so helpless."

Sakura blinked, concerned by the distress in his voice. "Yue-san...?"

"There is nothing I can do for you now," he murmured. "I cannot aid you in this, no matter how desperately I might wish it; I can only stand here, distant and futile as the moonlight itself, watching as you suffer--"

"That's not true!" she said, and leaned forward to catch his hands between her own. "The number of times you or Yukito-san have sat with me and rubbed my back or my middle when I've been uncomfortable -- I'm embarrassed to have taken so much of your time and attention for such silly things, honestly." 

"It's not silly," he murmured. "You hurt, and there is so little I can do to ease that..."

"How do you think I feel?" Sakura asked wistfully. "Yue-san, I know when you hurt too. You spent so very long alone in the dark, and deep in your heart, somewhere that I can't seem to touch, you're still afraid to believe that this is real -- that you have oniichan, that you have happiness, that it won't be snatched away from you... I watch you hurting even when you smile sometimes, and I wish there was something I could do. I wish I was strong enough that you could just trust me, the way you trusted Clow-san..."

"I trusted him with everything, and he died," Yue replied, quiet and tired. "It wasn't his fault. I've come to understand that, lately. The fault was mine, for asking the impossible. Even he could not live for me simply because I needed him to. I cannot ask the same of you. I cannot make the same mistake again. It is not fair to any of us. All I can do is to hold on to you and to Touya with all the strength I have, and to pray that my strength is enough for a time."

With a small sad smile, Sakura smoothed his hair back from his face. "But don't spend your whole life living in fear of that day," she said. "Don't spend so much time clinging to us in fear that you forget how to hold us and smile. Please?"

Yue bent his head beneath her hands, and said, "I will try."

"Thank you." Sakura shifted a little in her seat, and said, "If you were Kero-chan I'd get you some pudding and all would be right with the world. Actually, the same thing would work for Yukito-san too. I still need to find what makes _you_ that happy. --I don't suppose you might like pudding after all? Or ice cream crepes?"

Yue looked up at her again, with the ghost of a small smile that looked suspiciously like Yukito's tugging at his lips. "Shall I go and bring you one?"

"Oh--! No, no, I wasn't trying to hint or anything, I just... I wondered if... but... um..."

"It might be wiser to bring one now," Yue said. "If you sent Yukito, I don't know if your crepe would make it all the way back unmolested. Chocolate and strawberries, yes? Pardon me for a moment..." 

And he stood, bowed, and walked toward the crepe-sellers' booth while Sakura was still spluttering over how to protest.

"Are you done snooping through the ferns yet?" Touya asked Tomoyo dryly.

"For the moment, yes," Tomoyo replied, very much on her dignity. "Besides, I want a better angle to film Sakura-chan and her crepe!"

Muttering something unprintable under his breath about what prolonged exposure to the electrical fields from the videocameras had done to scramble her brain, Touya hoped he wasn't limping too much as he walked out from behind the fern and over toward his little sister. He was the one with the black belt, but Tomoyo didn't need a black belt when she had high heels with sharp points.

Touya wasn't the only one walking across the courtyard cafe toward Sakura, though. With a couple nudges from giggling comrades, a little girl about four or five years old tiptoed over with a finger in her mouth, and then stood there staring.

Sakura blinked down at the girl, a little surprised. "Can I help you? --Are you lost?"

No response but more finger-chewing; another of the children piped up, "Are you Mrs. Santa Claus?"

"Am I who...? Why...?"

"'Cause you're fat, and you've got a red dress," the littlest one said, matter-of-factly.

"She doesn't have a beard," the second one said.

The littlest one turned a look of utter disdain on her comrade. "Of _course_ she doesn't have a beard," she said. "She's _Mrs._ Santa Claus."

"I... er... oh, goodness_..._" Sakura put both hands to her cheeks to try to hide her blushing.

The finger-chewer mumbled something that sounded like, "'r y' r'lly mzz san'claus?"

"She's got an elf, too," the littlest one said, determinedly. "I saw him."

"An elf...? --Yue-san...?"

"He has white hair," the littlest one said, as if that proved everything.

"So do foreigners," said the second one, who seemed to be the skeptic of the group.

"...'n gran'ma," the finger-chewer said.

"But he's got to be an elf because she's Mrs. Santa Claus!" the littlest one wailed. "And he knelt and everything."

"Oh, _dear,_" Sakura said.

Struggling with a grin that threatened to crack his face open, Touya leaned over the back of his sister's chair and said, "Looks like some bright kids we've got here."

"Oniichan, stop that this minute!"

Three pairs of eyes swiveled to blink at him. "You look _normal_," the littlest one said, sounding utterly betrayed by Touya's normalness.

"So did she, before she married my brother-in-law," Touya said, enjoying every minute of this. 

"_Oniichan!_"

It wasn't actually teasing _Sakura_ if he was talking to the kids, after all. Technically. And probably even Yukito wouldn't blame him for the technicalities. Maybe. Depending on whether or not there was something edible as a distraction. He made a mental note to ask Yue to buy Yukito some ice cream before changing back.

Yue, coming back with Sakura's crepe, stopped dead in his tracks when all three pairs of little eyes swiveled to fix unnervingly on him. He stared back.

After a long assessing moment, the littlest one said, "I _told_ you he was an elf."

Yue nearly dropped the crepe in shock; Touya took it from him and took a bite of it himself before handing it off to Sakura, who was nearly as red as her dress between embarrassment and vexation.

The little skeptic said, "Elfs don't have tails."

"Tails...?" Sakura squeaked. "Oh -- Yue-san, some of your hair's come loose--"

Touya reached over and fished Yue's improvised ponytail out of the back of Yukito's sweater; Yue was still staring fixedly at the children, trying to decide whether or not they posed a hazard to his human disguise that anyone over the age of seven would be likely to fall for.

"See?" Touya said to the littlest one, with a conspiratorial grin. "No tail, just his hair. I guess that means he has to be an elf after all, doesn't it."

A second too late, Yue turned to stare at him in utter shock; Sakura threw a chair cushion at her brother's head, all but incoherent.

"You -- you -- oooohhh...!"

"Waiii!" The littlest one was jumping up and down in excitement; then she turned to the skeptic and proclaimed, "I told you so!"

Sakura turned to Tomoyo to plead for assistance, but whatever she might have said died unspoken. Tomoyo was glued to the eyepiece of her video camera, with one of her dazzled expressions on. It was generally easier to pry Kero away from pudding than to pry Tomoyo away from her video camera when she was being all ..._sparkly_ like that.

With a fixed, shaky grin on her face, Sakura asked her brother through clenched teeth, "If Yue-san is an elf and I'm Mrs. Santa Claus, what does that make you?"

"Santa Claus's brother in law, of course," Touya replied far too helpfully. "Isn't it obvious?"

Yue looked as though he were physically ill, suffering through the combination of agonized embarrassment, hurt and astonished outrage at Touya's fanning the flames, and shaking tension over the way the children were blithely announcing his inhumanity to anyone who cared to listen. Sakura reached over to hold his hand, as much for her own comfort as for his.

Touya bent over and said to the littlest one in a secretive voice, "So what is it that you want for Christmas?"

"A kitty!"

"Any particular kind?"

"One that purrs."

Touya nodded sagely, and pulled a scrap of paper out of his coat pocket to write it down on. "Kitty that purrs. Got it. ...How about you?" he asked the finger-chewer.

"...h'wai'j'nee..."

Somehow, Touya got "Hawaiian Jenny" out of that, and wrote it down too. He looked at the skeptic and said, "I suppose you're too grown up to ask Santa Claus for anything, aren't you. Oh well."

"Oniichan!" Sakura gasped, because the little skeptic looked utterly miserable, torn between being grown up and wanting to ask Santa Claus for a Christmas present.

"Yeah, I know," Touya said. "It's hard for you to believe there are kids who don't actually believe in your husband and all, but you just have to face facts sometimes..."

Sakura was out of loose pillows to throw, and couldn't reach her shoes around the bulge in the middle. "Oniichan, you... you...!"

The little skeptic stalked over to Yue and glared up at him, all miniature ferocity. "Are you _really_ an elf?"

After a long frozen moment, Yue sighed, and knelt to be closer to the child's height.

"Look into my eyes," he murmured. "What do you think...?"

After a moment's staring, the little skeptic's eyes grew enormous. "Whoooooaaaa...!"

"I told you so," the littlest one said again, vindicated.

Yue shot a frantic look at Sakura, wondering if he'd just made a terrible mistake. _Yukito said I should, he said it would be all right, but if they tell other people, what can we do? What if..._

She smiled at him and silently replied, _It's fine. We just tell the grown-ups  you have contacts._ Out loud, she said to the little skeptic, "So what _would_ you like for Christmas?"

The skeptic shot Touya a dirty look, then stretched up on tiptoe to whisper in Yue's ear.

Touya was 'casually' leaning on Sakura's chair again, because it let him end up with an elbow on the chair back, his chin propped in his palm, and his fingers 'casually' over his mouth, clamping down hard on the urge to burst into howls of glee.

"So, then," Sakura said, a little too brightly. "I'll tell my _husband_ that the three of you would like a kitty, a Hawaiian Jenny, and --" she shot a glance at Yue.

_A pony. Good luck._

Sakura gulped hard, then said gamely, "And a pony for Christmas."

The look of redoubled awe in the skeptic's eyes was both heartening and terrifying. The likelihood of an ordinary family having a place to put a pony in Tokyo was approximately on par with the likelihood of Yukito spending 24 hours locked in a room with a cheesecake and not eating a single bite... or on par with Yue spending the same time in the same room and eating a bite.

"We can't make any guarantees," Yue said, very faint, and clearly under some mental pressure from his mirthful other half. "Santa has to think about whether or not the pony could fit down the chimney, you see..."

Three little heads nodded soberly. Someone's mother was waving from the other side of the food court, and making rather agitated get-back-here gestures; the three of them bobbled little bows, and said their thank-yous quite properly. But even as they headed back toward the gesturing mother, the littlest one said in absolute vindicated bliss, "I _told_ you he was an elf."

As soon as they were approximately out of earshot, Touya dissolved into gales of hilarity, doubled over the back of Sakura's chair shaking with glee.

"You," Yue said in a voice dripping shards of ice, "are sleeping on the sofa for a month."

Touya simply started laughing harder.

"Oniichan, that was _mean! _To put poor Yue-san in a predicament like that... not to mention me too!"

Still leaning hard on the chair, Touya managed to wheeze, "Predicament...? He did fine...! You both did. And I bet anything... inside his head... Yuki's laughing like mad too..."

Rather than dignify that with a response -- most likely because he would have had to agree, Sakura thought furtively -- Yue turned on his heel and started walking toward the restrooms. "It's past three," he said. "I'm going to change." 

Sometimes, Sakura envied Yue his ability to escape when her brother and the rest of the world got to be too much to handle.


	6. ch 6: Options

**Promises to Keep, chapter 6**  
**"Options"**

(I really should be cleaning my apartment instead. Oh well... it'll still be a mess tomorrow...)

When Yukito came back to their little gathering in the courtyard, his face was flushed and he was panting as though he was badly out of breath, but he was laughing too.

"Yukito-san?" Sakura asked.

Yukito half-sat, half-collapsed into a chair beside her, and said breathlessly, "He's stronger than I am... and he was so... so completely terrified...! My heart's still pounding as though I've run ten miles..." Leaning on the table a little for support, he grinned up at Touya. "You'd have won that bet, too..."

"You okay?" Touya asked, concerned by his breathless, faintly trembling exhaustion.

"I will be," Yukito said. "Just... let me catch my breath..."

Sakura turned a ferocious scowl on her brother. "You see? You shouldn't torment people like that! Both Yue-san and Yukito-san..."

Yukito shook his head a little. "It's all right." With a soft, wistful smile, he gently folded his hands over his pounding heart, and murmured to his other half, "We're safe, really. I promise -- no one's going to let the children hurt you."

"From anyone else," Touya said, "that would have been acid-dripping sarcasm. How do you manage to say things like that so _sweetly?_"

Yukito blinked wide, honey-golden eyes up at his lover. "Why would it be sarcasm?"

A little awkwardly, Touya shrugged and rumpled Yukito's hair. "...I just don't know anyone else who could say something like that with a straight face. They're four-year-olds, for Pete's sake. Real big and scary."

"It doesn't matter if a threat is real or not as long as it _feels_ real," Yukito said. "I think fear needs to be comforted, not denied -- whether or not it's a necessary fear. That might be something Clow-san never understood how to help Yue with."

"I think you're just too damn _nice_ for this world," Touya said ruefully. "Lucky for me, I love you that way."

Yukito shook his head a little. "Lucky for me," he said, "I've always had you to protect me from the world. As long as I've been alive, I've had you. I haven't had to face things alone the way Yue has. So you're right; I am too naive, and I hope I'm not encouraging him to open up just to be hurt again. We both need you to keep us in balance, you know. I'm still so much too young..."

"You are not," Touya said, bending over to touch their foreheads together so that he could look straight into Yukito's eyes. "Sometimes you're older and wiser than I'll ever be. _You,_ not just Yue. And I told you, I love you both just the way you are."

Sakura was blushing furiously, and paying far more attention to eating her crepe than was necessary. Tomoyo, on the other hand, was glued to her camcorder's viewfinder again. She'd managed to position herself so that she got both the young lovers and Sakura with her crepe into the frame, and she looked utterly delighted with the world.

Yukito smiled up into Touya's eyes, and curved his hand against his lover's cheek in silent, adoring joy. Touya tipped his head just enough to brush a kiss against Yukito's palm, then said a little huskily, "We're having the rest of this conversation later. Away from the videocamera."

"But I was enjoying the conversation quite a bit," Yukito replied, still a bit breathless, although for a different reason. "Particularly the part where we stopped talking."

"Yukito-san!" Sakura squeaked, embarrassed.

"But don't you think he owes me, for making Yue so frightened and all...?" Yukito turned devastatingly unfair wistful-aching-puppydog eyes toward her; Sakura was slowly turning as red as her Christmas dress.

Utterly deadpan, Touya retorted with half-lidded eyes, "In other words, you're angling for some ice cream too."

"Exactly!" Yukito replied, all sunshine and bounce again. "Except it's so hard to decide which flavors; there's so many options..."

"In other words, one of everything?"

"No," Yukito said thoughtfully, "because then some of it would melt before I could eat it. Hmm..."

"Let's go," Touya said, grinning despite himself. "Tomoyo-chan, what flavors do you want?"

"Oh... green tea and ume," she said. "Thank you, Touya-san."

"No problem." He looped an arm around Yukito's waist, partially to steady him in case he was still feeling shaky, and partially simply to hold him. Yukito snuggled into his arm with a happy sigh, and put an arm around Touya too, which took all question of 'just supporting an ill friend' out of the picture.

People turned to look at them as they stood in line at the crepe-sellers, standing so close, and so unselfconscious about it. Yukito's sheer effusive delight in something so simple as ice cream practically lit up the room by itself; Touya laughed with him now, instead of standing a little bit away and just smiling. 

A few years ago, Touya would have been too self-conscious to hold Yukito in public; now, though, he was learning acceptance of such open intimacy from Yukito's serenely confident joy in their love, and Yue was slowly learning it from them both. It wasn't that they hadn't experienced prejudice -- far from it, in fact -- but Yukito let any kind of slurs or insults melt away, because they couldn't touch the truth of his love, and Touya didn't like beating people up when Yukito was standing there smiling at him. 

It was a mellowing of a rather limited sort -- Touya felt no qualms about beating up anyone who insulted or threatened Yukito as long as his snow bunny _wasn't_ standing there so gently watching, and he'd earned a couple more black belts in the past few years, because it still felt necessary to keep up the ability to fight back when someone pushed a grudge too far. But still, Touya hadn't actually hospitalized a bigot since they'd graduated from the university, and now he would stand holding Yukito in the middle of the mall and laugh with him at the kittens on the paper the crepes were wrapped in. 

Sakura had thought she'd never see it happen, just like she'd thought she'd never see Yue truly laugh; her brother and her guardian had been good for each other in so many ways, in whichever form he wore.

Just as he had feared the children's innocent delight over his inhumanity, Yue would never have dared to stand so close to Touya where all the world could see them. A human-seeming male lover was one thing; an inhuman male lover was something else, no matter how Yukito and Touya both assured him that with his wings hidden, he _could_ pass more easily than he thought. 

But Yue's own strengths were very different than both Yukito's and Touya's. When faced with mockery and hateful slurs, Yukito simply stood and smiled and accepted whatever was flung at him, whether words or fists; and in the same situation, Touya lashed out. Yue had had centuries to learn how to duel with different weapons, including sharply edged words alone -- and words wouldn't get you expelled from the university; Touya's last serious fight, where he'd hospitalized a man who'd physically attacked Yukito, nearly _had_ gotten him expelled. 

All of them had things to learn from each other, and joys to share. Even if Yue never learned when to simply let go of the vigilance of his guardianship, or if Yukito never learned to stand his ground and fight back, or if Touya never learned when to just stop teasing -- there was joy enough between them, and they balanced each other well.

The baby stirred within Sakura's distended womb, and she sighed and touched her fullest place with a wistful hand.

"Oniichan would have made a wonderful father," she said to Tomoyo, gently rubbing the taut roundness of her abdomen. "That's the only thing that Yue-san and Yukito-san can never give him."

"They'll make wonderful uncles," Tomoyo replied. "And if they want someone to carry a child for them... I'm sure we can find someone willing. I might even consider it myself. Watching how you've become so perfectly radiant with your pregnancy, Sakura-chan... I'm almost jealous sometimes!"

"Jealous of this?" Sakura asked, startled. "Of not being able to tie your own shoes without help, and your back always, always hurting, and looking like a whale, and oniichan _telling_ you that you look like a whale, and never being able to sleep through a night for being kicked in places it shouldn't be possible to _be_ kicked, and... what's to be jealous of?"

Tomoyo simply smiled at her, and said, "Your crepe's going to drip."

"...Oh!" She licked at the trickle of melting ice cream hastily, then took another bite.

Between the two of them, Touya and Yukito were carrying four crepes back from the ice cream shop; Touya handed Tomoyo hers, then took a bite of his own, and Yukito happily took a bite from each of the two he held.

"The monster's the pregnant one," Touya said to him, and licked a stray drip of ice cream from his fingers. "What's your excuse?"

"I'm eating for two too, you know," Yukito replied, as serenely cheerful as ever. "I keep hoping one of these days Yue's going to admit that he actually likes it when I eat mint chocolate chip ice cream! It's the only flavor I've ever heard him 'wake up' for."

"Yukito-san? Is Yue-san 'awake' right now?" Sakura asked, a little anxiously.

Yukito paused to consider. "I think he's trying not to be," he said, wry. "Cute kitty crepe wrappers are just a dreadful offense to his dignity, you know."

"Can you... um... can you ask him to not be awake when we go shopping for him? I mean, really and truly not listening at all? I want to really surprise him with his present, and it's so hard to know whether or not he's 'watching', and..."

"We know," Yukito said. "He understands. When we go shopping for him, he's promised he won't watch or listen at all."

Sakura breathed a great sigh of relief.

"If you're that worried about it, why didn't you shop for him when it was just you and Tomoyo-chan?" Touya asked wryly.

"Because I need Yukito-san in order to be able to buy it," Sakura said. "And... I need to talk to Yukito-san by himself too. By _himself_. Just for a little bit. But it's... it's very important..."

Touya blinked, several times. With an utterly bemused expression on his face, he said, "You're not buying Yue _sake_ or something, are you?"

"No!" Sakura said. "Of course not! He wouldn't like it."

"Then what else would you need someone over twenty-one to buy?"

Looking miserable, Sakura said, "If... if Yue-san's not asleep yet... then I don't want to talk about it out loud..."

Touya choked on his crepe as another thought occurred to him. "You're not... God, Sakura, tell me you're not buying him some sort of kinky 'adult' toy or..."

_"ONIICHAN!!!"_

Heads turned from several directions; Sakura, blushing about as pink as Tomoyo's ume ice cream, buried her face in both hands.

Touya, however, was still fixated on the terrifying vision of his pregnant little sister and his far too innocent lover walking into one of Those Shops and looking around at types of toys they shouldn't have any business knowing about. "Monster, that wasn't a 'no.'"

"Yes it was!" Sakura wailed, half muffled by her hands. "I'm not buying Yue-san anything perverted or alcoholic or anything like that! I don't need someone over twenty-one! I need _Yukito-san._"

Touya gave her an assessing look, then nodded a little grudgingly. "You promise?"

"I promise," Sakura said.

"Because I really couldn't stand it if Yue opened something like that in front of Dad."

"I _KNOW~!"_ Sakura wailed. "Neither could I!"

Tomoyo observed quite calmly, "Touya-san, I think it's fairly obvious that you're the only one who was thinking along those lines."

Touya's cheeks colored a little, and he took a too-emphatic bite of his crepe, so as to have an excuse not to answer for a while.

Yukito was a little pink-cheeked too, but he managed to keep his voice fairly steady as he said, "I'm happy to come shopping with you, Sakura-chan. To whichever store you were thinking of. Which I'm quite sure was _far_ more innocent than what your lecherous big brother was imagining."

Sakura nodded a little, still hidden behind her hands.

Yukito gulped down the last three bites of his crepes, then reached over to touch her shoulder gently. "Come on," he said, coaxing. "Let's go shopping for Yue, and the two of us can talk. --He says that he's 'closing his eyes' and he won't look out again until I tell him it's all right."

"Really...?"

"Really." Leaning closer, he asked, "Would you like to tell me now?"

Sakura shook her head, looking out just enough to glare at her brother. "Oniichan will just laugh at me. And if he doesn't know, then he can't slip and talk about it with you when Yue-san doesn't know he shouldn't be listening. --Let's go."

Much to Yukito's amusement, Sakura didn't say a word aloud about their destination; she simply led him there. To a shoe store. Specifically, to the boot section of a shoe store.

A little bit puzzled, Yukito asked, "Why would To-ya laugh at you for bringing me to a shoe store, Sakura-chan?"

Twisting a lock of hair around her finger, she took a deep breath, and got most of it out all in a rush. 

"Because I feel so badly for Yue-san in the wintertime, I hate it when my feet are cold, he never complains but then he never _would_, so I thought I should find him a pair of winter boots, but the problem is his clothing is white and lavender, and, well, white's not very practical for boots, they show stains like crazy when they're not magic, and I'm not supposed to use my power right now, but they don't make lavender boots for men, but you're not very tall, so I thought maybe we could find you a pair of boots in the ladies' section that would fit Yue-san too, except I know he's a different height and everything but your shoes seemed to fit him today, but I just _know_ oniichan would fall on the floor laughing if he knew I brought you to shop in the ladies' shoes department and I didn't want either of us to have to put up with that, and maybe this is a silly, stupid idea anyway, maybe Yue-san doesn't like shoes, he's had all those years to get them if he wanted them, it's just that I don't know if he doesn't wear them because he doesn't like them or because that's what Clow made for him to wear, and anyway I don't know if..."

Smiling, Yukito reached out and set his fingertips against Sakura's lips. "I think he'll be delighted," Yukito said, confidentially.

"...Really?"

"You're thinking of him, kindly and sincerely," Yukito said. "You're thinking of what he might want or need, as himself, and as a person in his own right, not just half a person. I'm sure he'll be both delighted and honored."

"...Oh." A little shy, Sakura said, "Then you don't mind either...? That I had to ask you to come with me and try on women's boots...?"

"It'll be fun!" Yukito said, earnestly.

"You're not embarrassed?" she asked, in an even tinier voice.

Yukito shook his head. "Not unless you want to put me in stiletto heels or something," he said. "I couldn't stand up enough to tell if they fit or not; I'd either break an ankle or my neck!" 

"No high heels," Sakura said hastily. "Just normal boots. Except for the being lavender part. And... um... soft and warm inside. That's all."

It took them about half an hour of looking; Yukito's feet were small for a man's, but large for a woman's, and slender as well. Finally they settled on a pair, though, and bought them, and Yukito hooked a hand through the handle of the bag and followed Sakura out of the store humming to himself.

"Back to To-ya and Tomoyo-chan, then?" he asked. "Shall we give Tomoyo-chan a call on your cell phone?"

"No," Sakura said, quickly, and a little desperately; Yukito stopped and turned to look at her.

"No...?"

"I... um... I need to talk to _you,_ Yukito-san. Without Yue-san listening. Please. It's... just... please, I _need_ to talk to you..."

The urgency in her voice convinced him; he looped his free arm through hers and patted her hand gently. "All right, Sakura-chan," he said. "Let's find a quiet place to sit, and we can talk. Might I ask what it's about? You sound so... anxious."

Sakura bit her lip, then nodded a little. "I am," she murmured. "I mean... I don't have time to wait anymore, and I know Shaoran and Kero-chan will be furious with me, and Yue-san will be _beyond_ furious, but... every day that goes by, I'm more and more afraid that time will run out before I've had the chance, and I couldn't live with myself if... I mean... well, I couldn't live with myself in the other case anyway, but... I'm saying this all wrong, Yukito-san, but... um..."

There was a bench by a brightly lit Christmas tree in one of the side corridors; Yukito led her over to it and saw her carefully settled, then sat down beside her and took her hands again. "Sakura-chan, what are you talking about?" he murmured.

"...Options," she whispered.

"Options...?"

"Options. A way for you to live, you and Yue-san. Even if I die having the baby."


	7. ch 7: Girls' Night Out

**Promises to Keep, Chapter 7  
****"Girls' Night Out"**

(Butterfly: thanks for the review! I promise this isn't a permanent tone shift, it's just that there's something I've got to set up, and it's taking me more pages than I thought to get everyone worked into place. I try to keep the chapters 6 to 7 pages in Word, and when I hit a scene break around that point I stop the chapter, even though probably chapters 5-8 would make what I'd normally call a "chapter" worth of plot material... anyway, chapter 8 soon I hope! I might get it done in the next couple days, who knows...)

Touya was pacing a small tight circle around the table where Tomoyo was demurely seated and sipping a cup of green tea.

"What the hell are they shopping for that would take an hour and a half?"

Tomoyo actually giggled. "Kinomoto-san, you don't understand women at _all,_ do you."

He bit back the first two obvious retorts. Unfortunately, the third one made it past his sanity-check filter: "What could anyone sane possibly understand about them? It's times like this I thank God I'm gay."

"And so does the female population of the country, I'm sure," Tomoyo replied without batting an eyelash.

Touya's jaw dropped open. After a moment's fuming outrage, he burst out laughing, and dragged a seat over to the table to sit down too. _Sakura just seethes at me; Yuki's all sugar and roses with his comebacks. It's been a while since I got into a duel of wits with someone who _sharpens _their wits..._

"Touche," he said. "Still. What on earth are they looking for? Your cell phone _is_ turned on, right?"

"Yes," Tomoyo said, and went back to her tea.

Touya shot her a half-lidded glower. "So can I use it or not?"

"No."

"...Why not?"

Tomoyo sighed, and nodded towards a point behind him. "Turn around," she suggested.

Yukito was holding a bag in one arm and Sakura in the other; she had her head bent, and he had an arm around her waist, very carefully matching his strides to hers. Touya's eyes narrowed, and he stood up and crossed the distance between them in about five seconds. Not running; he wasn't such a sap he'd go running, of course. He was just... moving with reasonable haste.

"Yuki? --Monster? --Yuki, what's going on?"

"Sakura-chan's a little tired, I think," he said, smiling as ever, but somehow it didn't quite reach all the way to his eyes this time. "I've taken the liberty of planning out our evenings, by the way, and no, To-ya, you don't get to debate it. Not tonight. Come on, Sakura-chan, let's sit down for a minute..."

Yukito helped Sakura into the chair Touya had just vacated, as gently and carefully as though she were made of spun glass. Gallantry was nothing unusual from him, of course, but there was a certain pitch to his concern which wasn't quite normal. Touya gulped back a completely irrational burst of terror that burned hot enough to scald.

"Yuki? You're scaring the hell out of me and I can't even figure out why."

"Don't be frightened," Yukito replied immediately, and reached over to twine his fingers through Touya's. "It'll be all right. It'll all be fine. You'll both see."

Touya took a careful breath, and tried to let that make some kind of sense. "I don't suppose you might divulge some actual _information_ right about now, would you."

"I would, but it's not my information to share," Yukito replied. "To-ya, you and Sakura-chan are having a sibling bonding night. Just the two of you. Tomoyo-chan, I'm taking you out to dinner, and afterwards, we're going to a movie or something public, or else sitting in your house with people who know nothing at all about Yue. And you're not to let either of us out of your sight until Sakura-chan or To-ya calls."

"Yuki?" Touya asked huskily.

"Hmm?"

"What the _hell_ is going on here?"

Yukito sighed a little, and stretched up on tiptoe to kiss Touya's cheek, and said, "It'll be all right, really."

"Yuki...!"

"Sakura-chan worries too much," Yukito murmured. "But there's something she needs to do, and I'm doing everything I can to help. Which in my case means keeping both of me out of the way this evening. Tomoyo-chan, I'd be most grateful if we could hurry a bit. Sooner or later, Yue's going to get suspicious about why I haven't told him that the shopping is over. If we can generally stay surrounded by magic-ignorant potential witnesses, it would be... a wise and hopefully unnecessary precaution. Just in case."

Tomoyo had already gathered up her bags and boxes and was standing up to join Yukito; her brows were faintly furrowed with concern. "Tsukishiro-san, can you explain a little once we're alone...?"

Yukito shook his head a little. "I'm going to be thinking quite hard about ice cream all evening. And cheesecake and cream puffs and whatever utterly girly movie you'd most like to see. And anything else that's likely to bore Yue to sleep. I'm sure Sakura-chan can explain later. Let's go, though, or we won't get through dinner before the eight o'clock showings!" 

He took some of Tomoyo's packages from her, and said to Touya with unusual seriousness, "Call me later." And then he turned his most cotton-candy sweet-and-fluffy smile on Tomoyo: "So what would you like to see? I've heard there's a rerun of 'Pretty Woman' playing at the Metro Retro this week; that's always been my personal definition of the quintessential chick flick!"

"For pure cinematography I think 'The Piano' is the most beautifully-filmed selection they've shown recently. --But I like 'The English Patient' too. Or 'Titanic' maybe."

"Too depressing," Yukito said, waving a hand in the air. "What kind of a girls'-night-out ends up with everyone crying all over each other?"

"More of them than you'd like to imagine, Tsukishiro-san," Tomoyo replied with great composure, "particularly if one of the girls has just had some sort of life trauma that compels her to eat half a gallon of chocolate ice cream in one sitting."

"There's something unusual about that?"

"For most people, yes..."

The automatic doors closed behind them; Touya turned his attention back to the completely immobile and silent figure of his little sister, sitting with both hands cradled protectively against the great mound of her pregnancy.

_...She's gotten huge. When did she get so huge? She's my baby sister. I changed her diapers. She's not supposed to be sitting here big enough to burst with a baby of her own..._

With a sigh, Touya dropped to his knees in front of Sakura's chair, angling to see her eyes without having to disturb her if she was actually crying. It didn't look like it, but it didn't look like she was far from it either.

Very tentatively, he touched her knee and said, "Sakura?"

To his dismay, the tears spilled down her cheeks then; she streaked a hand across her face with a strained half-giggle. "Oniichan, I... I _know_ something's gone wrong... when you don't call me 'monster'...!"

"Tell me," he said, more roughly than he meant. "What the hell is going on? Why does Yuki think Yue's going to try to do something that he needs witnesses around to try to stop? --Why are you _crying_...?"

"I don't know," she said, miserable, and it seemed to trigger more tears. "I don't know... I don't know anything... I'm just... I'm exhausted, and everything hurts, and I've got too many lives I'm holding right now, too many lives that depend on mine, and... I... I just... I want to go home..."

_Hormones?_ Touya thought, with an almost crazed giddy hope. _Pregnant women are all about hormones. And Yuki was... worried, but it seemed like he was more worried about keeping Yue out of the way... yeah, 'mister hyper-rational Yue the Judge plus neurotic emotional hormonal-rollercoaster tired-out pregnant woman' is _not_ a happy cocktail mix. Let's hope it's all just those wild and crazy hormones._

_God, talk about things I never thought I'd hear myself think..._

Touya had learned a thing or two about carrying people after months spent picking up Yukito after his fainting spells. However, Yukito was as slender as a wraith; Sakura's weight per se wouldn't be a bother for him, but as a general rule, hugely pregnant women didn't bend in the middle very well. 

He considered his sister's figure, sitting slouched in the overstuffed chair twisting a kleenex pointlessly through her fingers, and decided on an approach. One hand went behind her knees, the other around what remained of her waist; she yelped a little in surprise as he struggled a bit to lift her out of the chair.

"Oniichan...?"

"The monster's been out on a leash all day," he grunted, leaning a little precariously to one side to grope for her purse with two free fingers. "Enough rampaging around Tokyo cutting swathes of destruction and shopping carnage. Time to get you home and settled down again. You can devastate the rest of the malls tomorrow."

It always worried him a little bit when she didn't howl protests of being called a monster; instead, she twisted a little awkwardly in his arms and flung her arms around his neck and hugged him tightly, burying her face in the curve between his throat and his shoulder. Her tears were hot against his skin, and Touya fought off another wave of scalding panic.

"Monster?" he said huskily. "Tell me there's nothing to worry about. Tell me Yuki's right."

"I think he's right," she mumbled against his shoulder. "I'm just tired and scared, and it's harder to be cheerful... and I... um..." She hesitated a moment, then gulped hard and looked up at him. "Oniichan, there's a very large favor that I need to ask of you. While Yukito-san's keeping busy with Tomoyo-chan. I just don't quite know how to ask..."

"You don't need to," Touya said, carrying her carefully toward the doors, heedless of the stares that were following them.

"Yes, I do..."

"No, you don't," he said again. "Whatever you need, I'll do it."

Somehow, that seemed to be the wrong thing to say too, because a fresh wave of tears spilled down her reddened cheeks; Touya stopped in his tracks. 

"Oh, hell, was that wrong too? Why? --Monster, I'm sorry, I don't want to keep making you cry, I just... I meant..."

Sakura shook her head fiercely, and scrubbed the back of her hand across her cheeks in a rather futile attempt to disguise the signs of her tears. 

"...I love you, oniichan..."

Touya meant to say, _I love you too, monster,_ except that his throat had just choked shut with the pressure of his own unshed tears. It was hard to breathe around the knot in his throat, let alone speak, and he had to keep his eyes clear for driving; he simply stood by the door holding her for a long, quiet moment, and then bent his head to brush a kiss against the tears on her cheek.

_Hormones. Got to be the pregnant-woman lunacy hormones. Damn -- got to be _contagious_ lunacy hormones or something..._

Whatever else was going on, Sakura was clearly telling nothing but the unadulterated truth when she said she was exhausted. She was half asleep in his arms by the time he got them back to the van, and he felt guilty about having to wake her enough to ask her to unlock the door for him. 

Touya was ridiculously careful about settling her into the front seat and fastening her seatbelt -- Yukito had told him the rules for pregnant women and seatbelts: the shoulder strap went over the bulge, the waist strap went under it, across the hips, so that the baby wouldn't get pressed against restraints if the seat belt lock kicked in. Sakura smiled at him with a softly sleep-hazed tenderness, and smoothed his hair a little, then settled her hands against the great distended mound of her belly.

She was entirely asleep by the time they pulled out of the parking lot; Touya swore quietly to himself, because he didn't want to be left alone with the inside of his own head right then, but he wasn't going to turn on the radio and disturb her.

There was something about the way pregnant women touched their bellies that always unnerved him. It must have been genetic, because they all did it; no one taught them, but they all did it. A pregnant woman touched her belly the way some people touched their lovers; it was something intimate and terrifying about the way their hands curved so carefully and lovingly over the roundness, something that said louder than words, _you're more precious to me than my own life._

Yukito touched him that way sometimes, and it always scared the hell out of Touya whenever he did it. It was so nakedly, unashamedly emotional. 

Yue understood why Touya was always terrified by that voiceless, overwhelming love; Yukito didn't understand, but then Yukito had never lost anyone who was that precious to him. Both Touya and Yue silently agreed to keep it that way as long as they could possibly manage.

Sakura had learned that touch too, somewhere deeper than instinct; even asleep, her hands cradled her belly with tender, reverent adoration. Touya stared fixedly out at the road, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.

_I should've ripped that Chinese punk's head off years ago..._

He could hear Yukito's voice in his mind, with that barely-suppressed ripple of laughter warming his words: _Sister complex--_

_Oh, shut up,_ he told the Yuki in his mind, and concentrated on the road.


	8. ch 8: Just In Case

**Promises to Keep, Chapter 8  
**"Just in Case"

slightly belated Happy Valentine's day, folks - chocolate and cuddles to ensue! ^_^ (The AI invention someone really needs to invent: Something that lets you write the fanfic you want to write at the speed at which you'd read it... I want to read more of this; it takes too long to have to write it first... ^^;;;  'Nother note: Yeah, I invented "Yukito's" hot chocolate extravaganza in college (where the hot water machine always made hot cocoa that was too hot to drink, and the ice cream server was right next to it). It's even more insanely over the top when you add hot caramel or butterscotch too... ^_~)

----

After Yukito had spent so much time collapsing at odd intervals, Touya had become accustomed to thinking ahead when it came to invalids. He pulled the car into the driveway backwards so that Sakura's door was facing the sidewalk, then went and opened the front door of the house before going to gather her up and carry her inside. She barely stirred, making a faint sleepy sound and snuggling against his shoulder; Touya set her down on the sofa and tucked a blanket over her carefully, then went to cook dinner. If she woke up for it, she'd be hungry; if she'd rather sleep, _he_ was hungry.

It was a lot quieter, cooking without Kero-chan in the house -- or in the country, for that matter. Before this holiday, with the brat and the plush toy both gone, Touya hadn't consciously realized how much he hunched over his cooking in near-paranoid preemptive defense whenever Sakura was around.  It had taken him some thinking to realize that the reflex had nothing to do with Sakura herself, and everything to do with years of life around a ravenous, insatiable, dive-bombing fluffy yellow garbage disposal with wings -- moreover, a fluffy yellow garbage disposal which liked to hide in her purse so that you never _quite_ knew when to expect the next assault on the kitchen.

He heard Sakura stirring in the living room, and asked softly, "Monster, you okay?"

After a moment of blinking her way back awake, she answered with a touch of panic in her voice: "What time is it? How long was I asleep?"

"Not that long," Touya said. "Dinner's almost ready; relax, okay?"

"But I can't waste the time Yukito-san's giving me," she murmured.

"Huh?"

Sakura turned toward him, a bit awkwardly with the sofa's back in the way, and said, "I... um... I have a favor I need to ask you, oniichan, except I don't know how..."

"Yeah, I got that part earlier," Touya said, tossing the vegetables in the skillet. "Dinner first, then hot chocolate, and when you're totally floating away on the warm-fuzzies trip, _then_ we deal with the talking part; how's that sound?"

"...but Yukito-san..."

"Is buying time, yeah, I know," Touya said. "Leave it to Tomoyo-chan to pick a three-hour movie or something. Don't _worry._ It'll be all right. And dinner's going to get cold a lot sooner than the movie's going to get out. Got it?"

Sakura nodded a little, and tried to coax herself out of the too-soft depths of the sofa; Touya wagged a finger at her.

"You stay right there. This is me in pampering-the-sister mode. It doesn't happen too often. Take shameless advantage when it does, okay?"

With a wistful little smile, she nodded again, and settled herself more comfortably onto the sofa.

Touya was quite sincere about the pampering-the-sister mode, because he was doing it partially to calm his own half-squashed scrabbling panic that said _this is _serious_, Yuki was scared too, what's wrong with her? Is it something about the baby? What the hell is going on?_

Cooking took concentration. Cooking meant not cutting your thumb off while your brain was trying to distract you with panic attacks. Blood didn't make a good condiment for anything. 

So he cooked, and he made serious work of an artistic presentation too: shrimp dancing on a neatly-arranged fan of asparagus and carrots, a tidy little pile of sesame spinach and wakame salad clustered in the cup of an endive leaf, grilled mushrooms sliced and fanned like a peacock's tail. Sakura's eyes went wide when he handed her the plate.

"...Oniichan, this is beautiful; I can't eat something like this sitting on the sofa!"

"Yeah you can," Touya said; he set the teapot and a couple of cups on the coffee table, then sat down beside her.

"But... but..."

"You think you can possibly get your rotund self off of the sofa while balancing that plate too? Didn't think so." He grinned at her, the perfectly unrepentant rogue, and picked up his chopsticks. "Let's eat!"

Blushing fiercely, Sakura turned her attention to the plate. Carefully picking at each piece gave her an excuse not to look at anything else, after all.

It was one of the quietest meals they'd ever had; Touya turned on the most insipid fluff-pop music channel he could find just to drown out the sound of neither of them talking. And then, when both their plates were clean and Sakura was wringing her hands over what to say, Touya's nerve gave out too. When she turned toward him and took a breath as though to speak, he scrambled up and bolted for the kitchen again.

"Hot chocolate, remember? Yuki taught me the most _decadent_ thing to do with a mug of hot chocolate... of course, this is Yuki we're talking about, but still, it's pretty amazing! Don't move, I'll be right back..."

_I don't want to hear her tell me something's wrong. I don't want to know. I don't want it to be real... I... oh, hell..._

...but meanwhile his hands were steadily pouring milk hot enough to scald, because if he spilled it he'd be burned badly enough that they'd have to make a flying trip to the emergency room and fright like that was bad for pregnant people, particularly extremely-pregnant people. So he didn't let his hands shake at all as he poured the milk over the shaved bits of chocolate, or stirred them into melting in, and he eased a scoop of french-vanilla ice cream into each cup without splashing a bit, then dusted the top with cinnamon and crushed almonds and another drizzle of hot fudge, and then he carried both cups on a tray and presented them with a flourish and a bright and carefree grin. 

Sakura's eyes lit up almost despite herself, and despite her anxious preoccupation with the Talk they needed to have.

"What _is_ that?"

"Hot-fudge-sundae hot chocolate," Touya said, still grinning. "Like I said, leave it to Yuki. Stir the ice cream into the hot chocolate a little and it'll cool it down enough that you won't burn your tongue..." _Her eyes are smiling. It can't be THAT bad. It can't. It just can't..._

"Ohhh... oh, yum...!" She sniffed the air a little. "Yours smells different...?"

"Shot of Irish cream," he said, gambling everything on one too-casual toss of the dice. "You can have yours _after_ the junior monster gets here." 

"All right," Sakura said, still smiling. "That means I have a good excuse to make you make this for me again!"

And his heart leapt about three feet straight up toward the ceiling. _She didn't choke on that, she doesn't seriously think there _isn't_ going to be a time after the baby gets here -- anything else, _anything_ else, I can deal with. I know I can._

A little giddy on sheer euphoria even before taking a sip of the spiked chocolate, Touya clinked his glass against hers and said, "I'll drink to that!"

_...Unless the trauma's that she doesn't know how to say she's moving to Hong Kong. I don't know if I could deal with _that._ No way in hell am I moving to Hong Kong, Yuki-Yue has to go where she goes, and I'm _not_ giving them up, and I am _not _moving to Hong Kong, damn I should've thought more before I told her I'd do her _ANY_ favor she asked... nah, I was right the first time, I just should've ripped the Chinese punk's head off _ YEARS_ ago..._

"...Oniichan...?"

Belatedly, Touya realized he had a deathgrip on his mug, and he didn't want to guess what his expression must have looked like. "Er. Never mind," he muttered, taking an overdramatic swig of his hot chocolate and savoring the silky-sweet swirl of the rapidly-melting ice cream. _Cheerful perky Yuki-fluffy thoughts. No blood on the pavement. No examining the inside of the brother-in-law's skull firsthand to see if he's as brain-damaged as I suspect. Might be a cheerful thought for _me,_ but Sakura's going to wonder what's up if I break the mug or something..._

_And I'm still just delaying the inevitable._

Taking a deep breath, Touya braced himself and tried to keep his voice light and cheerful as he reached over and rumpled his sister's hair. "So, monster... want to talk?"

"...I'm not sure where to start," she murmured, studying the swirl of melting ice cream drifting around her chocolate.

"You're not moving to Hong Kong, are you?" The edge of alarm showed through more clearly than he intended; but Sakura just blinked at him in confusion.

"No; why would we? Yukito-san and Yue-san need to stay here with you, and Shaoran likes Tokyo University; why would we move?"

"No reason," Touya agreed hastily. "No reason at all. So...?"

Sakura stared down at her chocolate so fiercely that Touya suspected the poor beverage was wondering what it had done wrong. 

After a minute, he suggested, "Just pick a spot to start. Anywhere."

With a soft sigh, Sakura nodded a little. "I've been thinking about... um... batteries."

Touya blinked. Then blinked again. Then he said, very carefully, "Batteries."

"I was in an electronics class for one of my electives this semester, before I had to drop out because I get tired so easily now -- I tried, I really did; I didn't want to lose my entire junior year of college, but the baby was... kind of a surprise... not that I'm not _thrilled,_ I _am_, I'm delighted that she's coming, I would never trade her for my classes -- it's just that... there were also some things I'd really wanted to learn about batteries, some things I'd needed to have more time to learn..."

Touya said, "I take it back. Pick a _different_ spot to start, and let's see if _that_ one bears any resemblance to something that makes sense."

"Except that batteries are _important,_" Sakura said, and then bit her lip. "I know. I'm doing this all wrong. It's just been all tangled up in my head for so long now that I don't know how to start getting all of it out... um..." She took a sip of her chocolate, and sighed, and tried again. "You know how Clow-san was the first to balance Eastern and Western magic in the way he did, in the way that led to the Guardians and the Cards? I think I might be the first to try balancing magic and science. Shaoran's been helping me. Except we, um, disagree a little about whether I should do any magic right now. He's so very protective... it's just that... um... this is even more important than me being careful."

For once in his life, Touya found himself siding with the Chinese brat. "Nothing's more important than that," he said.

Sakura looked up at him, and her eyes were older than they had any right to be. "Don't say that," she said. "Please. You promised me you'd do what I asked..."

Touya felt the panic start to claw at him again. "You're not going to do anything risky, are you?"

"I don't think it is," Sakura said. "But even if it is, it's... please, oniichan! I've spent eight months waiting because I knew that the longer I could stand to wait, the better chance it'd be all right if the strain makes the baby be born too early or something, but I don't think it will, I really don't -- I just can't _not_ do this. Because it's not just my life. It's Yukito-san's, and Yue-san's, and even Kero-chan and the cards eventually -- I have to do this. Shaoran doesn't understand why, but I _have_ to do this..."

"You're protesting too much about how non-dangerous this is, you know," Touya said, huskily. "Can't it wait one more month?"

"No," Sakura said. "It has to be before the baby comes. It _has_ to be. I couldn't forgive myself otherwise."

"What has to be before the baby comes?"

Sakura bit her lip hard, and then murmured, "Giving Yue-san to you."

"..._What?_"

"Clow-san never had a child himself," Sakura said, a little desperately. "I mean, he had a family, but he was never the one _having_ the child -- nobody knows what it will do to my power; and they didn't even have anesthetics back then. If anything goes wrong, if they have to put me on life support or something, if my heart stops, even if they restart it -- even if an epidural does something unexpected to the way my magic circulates; it's like acupuncture, sticking a needle in someone's spine; Shaoran's mother says it's all very complicated -- and I don't know what that could do to my connection to them. I just don't _know_ what could happen to Yue-san and the others; nobody knows -- and it's not fair, and..."

A little alarmed by the headlong torrent of worries, Touya said, "Sakura--"

"Yue-san loves you. He loves _you,_" Sakura said. "You're the most important person in his world. He's already lost Clow-san, he shouldn't have to worry about losing his happiness with you too. But I went and got pregnant, and I'm risking his life and your happiness with my own thoughtless selfishness, and I can't live with the thought that something might happen toYue-san. If I lose my power, if some of the baby's magic is coming from me, if it leaves me when she's born -- if I can't support Yue-san, he'll die. And I can't stand that. Kero-chan could live if I lose part of my power to the baby, or if I died; the cards could go to sleep for a little while; but I can't change who Yue-san is. He is the moon. His power is always a reflection. But I can change _what_ it's reflecting -- and that's what I need to ask you about, oniichan... I mean... you helped him -- them -- before, so I know you're willing, and..."

"I would give the two of them anything, any time, if I could," Touya said. "But if they need magic, I don't have any left."

"I know," Sakura said. "That's what made me start thinking about batteries."

Touya blinked, shook his head sharply to try to clear it, rapped the heel of his hand against the side of his head to try to shake the echoes loose, and said weakly, "_That's_ what made you start thinking about _batteries?_"

"But it makes _sense_," Sakura said. "I mean, Kero-chan is like a solar-powered battery charger. Or maybe a pudding-powered battery charger. Anyway, he makes the power he needs, and I think part of the reason he stayed sealed in the book longer than Yue-san was that he was sort of the trickle-charger for the cards. And the cards are like VCRs..."

"VCRs," Touya echoed, blankly.

"Things with cords," she said. "I'm the power supply they need, they don't take much when I'm not using them actively, but they need to be plugged in or they can't keep the clock running and it's only when I 'turn them on' that they do things that take more power, and... um... --anyway. They need an external power source, even if just a small one. Kero-chan doesn't, not in the same way. But Yue-san is different from both. He's always 'turned on,' and he _actively_ needs power. Like a refrigerator..." 

Touya couldn't help himself. He clamped a hand over his mouth, but didn't manage to stifle the choke, wheeze, and small muffled explosion of laughter.

"_Oniichan,_" Sakura protested, a little hurt.

"Sorry...!" he gasped. "Refrigerators... Yue... always turned on...! oh, God, mental images I did _NOT_ need...!"

Sakura stared for a minute, uncomprehending -- and then her eyes shocked even wider, and her face turned bright crimson. "_ONIICHAAAAAAAN~~!_" 

She picked up a sofa pillow and started beating him over the head so vigorously he had to put down his chocolate rather than spill it on the floor; he wasn't putting up a very effective defense when he was doubled over clutching at his ribs and laughing hysterically.

"You... you said it first...!"

"Oniichan, I'm _trying to save Yue-san's life! And you're LAUGHING!_" She hit him hard with the pillow, then threw it across the room and turned away.

"I'm sorry," he wheezed, making a valiant effort to sober up. "I'm sorry, monster -- I'll try to be good..." He took a swig of his spiked hot chocolate, scrubbed the back of his arm across his face to try to clear the laugh-tears out of his eyes, and coughed and tried again. 

"So... you've got a pudding-powered battery charger, fifty-two VCRs, and an... an..." the laughter was winning again, but he couldn't help it, he really couldn't... "an always-turned-on walking refrigerator...?"

"You said you'd _help,_" Sakura choked, tears thick in her voice. "You said you'd..."

"I will," Touya said, putting his arms around her huddled shoulders and resting his cheek against her hair. "I'll help. I just don't understand yet. Tell me again how I can help with what's going on with your magical hardware and appliances collection?"

"You took out your battery and gave it to Yue-san," Sakura mumbled. "I mean... I... when I use magic, I'm tired for a while, but it comes back. I don't run out of it. You never used to run out of it either. You always could sneak up on people, or scare me with ghost stories, or..."

Feeling a little like a heel, Touya said, "It sounds like you're glad I haven't got any magic left."

"No I'm not, not really," Sakura said soberly, reaching up to put her hands over his. "You shouldn't have needed to give that up. But I know why you did it. Yue-san couldn't survive just by taking the magic you had in you right then. It wouldn't have lasted long enough. He had to take the part of you that created and stored magic. I can tire myself out and sleep for a while and have my power back. You used to be the same, but now you're not. Because you gave Yue-san the part of you that was like a battery. And there's still the hole in you. And I think I know what to do about it."

Touya blinked, then blinked again. "Hiiragizawa said it couldn't be undone."

"It can't be," Sakura said. "What you gave Yue-san is a part of him now. Yukito-san says that he can feel it -- the parts of you that came with the magic, the 'scent' of your life in that part of their power. It's why he always knows when something's wrong with you too, not just with me. I'm their mistress, but you're their lover, and you gave them a fundamental part of your life. They're connected to you through that gift, almost like the way they're connected to me. That's why I think I can do this. I can't give you back your own power. But I think I can give you a different power. Another battery. And Yue-san can live from it if anything happens to me, because of the ways that he's connected to you."

After a long minute, Touya said, "You're serious?"

Sakura nodded. "It has to work. It _has_ to. I can't bear it if it doesn't. Eriol-kun says he thinks it should work. He says it's not that different from the types of charges he used to give things, like when your bicycle ran away, or the teddy bear turned into a giant... just that this one needs to be self-renewing, it needs to be connected to you so deeply that your living recharges it, like your own used to, like mine does, and Kero-chan too... it's more complicated than the bicycle of course, but he helped me work out the theoretical parts, because he has all of Clow-san's memories of making Kero-chan -- and Yukito-san and I made the battery itself today. At the mall, while Yue-san had promised he wouldn't be watching us."

"That's why you were so beat?" Touya asked.

She nodded a little. "That plus I'd been carrying all this extra weight around trying to keep up with Tomoyo-chan all day, but yes. --It was very kind of him," Sakura added, wistful. "He knew he'd have to give up something he loved. He loves being so aware of you, like you're always touching a quiet place in his mind -- but I need part of that connection because it'll let me connect power back to you... um... so Yukito let me split it, to take part of it for the magic. --They'll still be connected to you, it's just that they won't consciously be aware of it anymore. They'll still find themselves at the right place; they just won't know why. And... he was a little worried that... um..." Sakura's cheeks pinked rather adorably, but she managed to say, "He was worried that... you'd find him... less... um... that he wouldn't know... what you wanted, not so deeply -- that he wouldn't... be able to... please you as much..."

When Touya realized what she was stammering her way around, he had a feeling his face was turning as red as hers. "That idiot," he muttered. "He _told_ you that?"

Sakura nodded, just as embarrassed. "You're very important to him, oniichan," she said. "He cares more about you than about himself. They both do. He wants to be sure that he makes you happy, that being with him makes you happy enough not to regret what you gave up for him..."

"Tell that idiot he can stop worrying about that right now," Touya said, still blushing.

Sakura nodded, but her eyes were still anxious. "Please be extra kind to Yukito-san for a while, oniichan -- he's loved having that connection to you; he'll miss it almost like you've missed being able to see Mother. And... Yue-san too... I mean... I know I'm going to make him terribly, terribly angry with this. And hurt. And I'm already sorry for it. I just... I can't _not_ do this..."

Touya blinked again. "Why would Yue be angry about this?"

"I know how he felt about Clow-san forcing him to live," she whispered, knotting her hands together in the fabric of her maternity gown. "I know how badly that hurt him. I know he didn't want to outlive me, that he never wanted to have to choose another master. But I can't help it. I'm just as selfish as Clow-san, really. Because I love him too much to let him die with me. And I'm the one his life is connected to, but you're the one his heart is connected to. I didn't have time to try to explain that to him -- that I thought his life should be yours to hold, not mine. That the one he really couldn't live without is you, not me. But he's still so tied to the thought of not outliving his master -- Clow-san's force is still such a terrible wound in his soul, and I didn't have time to persuade him. It would have taken years. I know it would have. So I'm not asking his permission. I'm just going to have to ask his forgiveness afterward..."

"What does Yuki think?"

"Yukito-san thinks I'm right," Sakura murmured. "He says that there should be a picture of Yue-san in the dictionary, beside 'stubborn.' But he says he loves us both, and that he'd love it if the battery I give you might be able to help you feel better properly. If it could help you not feel sleepy all the time. --None of us knows if you'd be able to see Mother again, or if there might be some entirely different magic it wakes in you, but Eriol-san says that at least the tiredness should go away if you have _some_ magic in that hole in you, even if it's not magic you can use... um... so... please...?"

Touya thought about it for a minute. "Doing this is going to make Yue mad at all three of us, you know. You for doing it, Yuki for keeping him in the dark, and me for knowing he'd be upset and doing it anyway. And probably Hiiragizawa for making it possible for you to do this. Of course, Yue's so tangled up in his head about Hiiragizawa it's not funny anyway."

"I know," Sakura murmured.

"And it's probably going to make the brat mad, you taking risks like this right now."

"I know," she said again. "It's not that I want to make either of them upset. But this is something I have to do. Because I can't live with the person I'd be if I didn't do it and something went wrong." With a wistful half-smile, she added, "Besides, if anything were going to have gone wrong, I think it would have been when Yukito-san and I took the power out of ourselves at the mall. Not that I expect either Yue-san or Shaoran to be understanding of the logic in that, of course... men, you know; all those overprotective pigheaded stubborn instincts, honestly. Yukito-san doesn't count, of course, but all the rest of them..."

Giving her a half-lidded glare, Touya said, "I don't know whether to be offended on behalf of my gender or offended that you don't think of me as a man."

Sakura blinked, and then started to giggle. "Of course I don't think of you as a man! You're an oniichan. That's an entirely different species from anything else."

"Meaning we're both monsters? Well, as long as it runs in the family..." With a quirk to his grin, he added, "Does Yuki know he doesn't count as a man either, to you?"

"He likes it," Sakura said, and stuck out her tongue at him. "He says if he had to care about whether or not he was acting like a man, then he'd have to spend so much time being all defensive and tough and bristly that he couldn't go to the Pink Princess ice cream shop and have a completely girly sundae whenever he wanted, and life just wouldn't be worth living without both you and a Sugar Plum Fairy Strawberry Kiss Super Sundae every so often. --Kero-chan is proud of him; I think he's almost adopted Yukito-san as his honorary little brother. He says he thinks that Yukito-san has gotten a much better grasp of priorities in twenty years than Yue-san has gotten over centuries. Of course, the biggest part of that is probably because of the sundaes, because Yukito-san can buy sweets for them both..."

Touya stared at her. "...You three _talk_ about things like this?"

Sakura started giggling. "Are you jealous?"

"More like appalled..."

"Don't you want a Sugar Plum Fairy Strawberry Kiss Super Sundae too?"

"No," Touya said. "I just want to watch him eating one. That by itself is about all the sugar shock I can stand without falling over in a diabetic coma."

With a small, wistful smile, Sakura said, "That's why I want to give him to you. So that no matter what happens, you'll always be able to watch Yukito-san eating ice cream and smiling. It's only fair."

"Nothing's going to happen to you," Touya said fiercely.

"I think you're right," Sakura said. "I think nothing's going to happen. I think it's going to be all right. But I don't _know._ That's one of Clow-san's talents, or curses, that he never passed along... and so that's why I'm asking for this. Please. Tell me you'll hold Yue-san's life with me, so that you can always be there for him, and he can always be there for you. So that I don't have to worry so much." She cupped a gentle hand against the mound of her belly, and murmured, "I'm holding so many lives, oniichan. I _need_ to share what I can. I think I could be strong enough to hold them all, but I'm so tired right now, and I... I just... I want to be able to relax a little. Please..."

When she put it that way...

_Of course she's tired out. Of course she's feeling overwhelmed. I don't even think this has anything to do with the hospital or the anesthetics; I think she'll be fine, everyone thinks she'll be fine -- but people have been expecting her to be fine for so long that of course she's tired of having to live up to all of that, all by herself, and now there's someone else that's totally dependent on her life too... the poor kid._

_And... being able to _know_ that I'd never have to worry about losing Yuki again... I don't care if it's selfish. I don't care if Yue gets angry... _

_...No. That's not true. I do care if he gets angry. I don't want to hurt him. He's been too badly hurt by people he loves already. _That's _what's been bothering Sakura so much; she knows it too..._

_It's not the same as what Clow did to him. But it's very, very close. Choices about his life being made without asking him, again... No wonder Yuki was so insistent about Tomoyo keeping him out in public where Yue couldn't possibly transform and come back here to try to stop her whenever he gets wind of what's going on. _

_But I understand why she doesn't ask, too. We both know him, by now. The baby just put a shorter time frame on it -- but I suspect none of us has a lifespan long enough to just _persuade_ him to bind himself to the chance of outliving another master. _

_...Well, if I'm going to do this,  I'd better stop wasting the time Yuki's giving us, too. _

_...Of course I'm going to do this. Sooner or later, he'll understand. I just hope it's sooner. Sakura'll be miserable if he won't even come out to see her baby... _

"Well, then, monster," Touya said, "what do you need me to do?"

Sakura blinked, and then realized what he was saying; her smile lit the entire room like the dazzle of a New Year's sunrise on the snow. She bent a bit awkwardly to reach down for her purse, dug around a little, and came out with a small gold-wrapped box with a bow on top of it.

"Here--"

Touya opened the box carefully, looked at the designer chocolate truffle inside, and burst out laughing.

"...Oniichan?"

"This was his idea, wasn't it," Touya gasped, still laughing. "Yuki and his sweet tooth...!" 

The truffle was covered in dark chocolate, with a sakura blossom delicately painted in white and faintly pink-tinted chocolate on the top, and a tiny crumple of gold leaf at the center of the blossom. And there was a little white chocolate bunny painted on each of the four sides. Of course. 

"Did he make them decorate it just for you?"

A little pink, Sakura nodded. "But I thought it was a good idea... I mean... it's got all the right symbol-stuff, you know? A gift from him and me, and sugar gives people energy; I thought about chocolate covered espresso beans because you like coffee, except I didn't want to make you go _straight_ through the roof when the power locks into you, and..." 

For some reason, that struck him as even funnier. Sakura was looking at him with half-lidded eyes as he clutched at the arm of the sofa, laughing too hard to breathe.

"...It's not _that_ funny." 

_Oh yes it is._ Touya scrubbed the heel of his hand across his eyes, and somehow managed to keep his voice from breaking as he said, "You are the cutest monster I've ever met in my life, you know. --Do I get a glass of milk to go with it?" 

"If you want one..."

"I'm kidding!" Touya put a hand on her shoulder to keep her from struggling her way out of the sofa to get him the milk. "I'm just kidding. So that's all there is to it? I eat the truffle and _that's_ my magic battery pack for Yuki...?" 

Sakura giggled. "When you say it that way, it _does_ sound a little odd, doesn't it?" 

_Only when I say it that way?_ Touya ruffled her hair, and then looked up at the window; the outside world was moon-bright and blue, the near-full moon glittering on the midwinter snow. He lifted the little chocolate treat out of its box, and his fingertips tingled oddly when he touched it. 

With a slight salute in the direction of the silent moon, Touya said, "Here's looking at you, kid," and bit into the truffle. 

For about three seconds, he thought, _Champagne-flavored. It's kind of fizzy. Yuki's got stylish taste-- _

--and then, in a white blaze like a million fireworks going off at once, the entire world exploded. 


	9. ch 9: Adventures in Electromagical Engin...

**Promises to Keep, Chapter 9  
****"Adventures in Electromagical Engineering"**

(Okay, originally this was part of chapter 8 too, but then it turned out to be 18 pages long, so I split it at the scene break again... ^^;; And Lawson's is a late-night convenience store with branches all over the place in Japan. Last chapter entirely from Touya's POV for a while, I should be back to rotating next time...)

----

In the Tomoeda movie theater, Yukito went completely rigid; a moment later, he started to shake, almost like convulsions. Alarmed, Tomoyo reached over and touched his hand. "Tsukishiro-san...?"

He couldn't answer, both hands knotted around the arms of the theater's chairs, eyes shut tight, shuddering all over.

The people behind them were too busy making out to notice; Tomoyo wondered if she should go and ask the security guard to call the mall's staff paramedics. Oddly enough, a little boy two rows in front of them turned around to stare.

"Why is he shining like that?" the little boy asked Tomoyo, wide-eyed.

The boy's mother waved an apology, turned the child around, and gave him a quick hushed lecture about keeping quiet in the movies; Tomoyo looked at Yukito again. Years of life around magic she couldn't see had almost attuned her to events like this, but it was a bit disconcerting for it not to be Sakura who was reacting to the invisible powers. Of course, she would have asked Yukito if he hadn't been busy convulsing at the moment...

_Do I call the paramedics? But what do I tell them when they try to take a CAT scan to find out what's wrong? 'Oh, sorry, I forgot to mention he's not human?' _

_I can't tell Sakura-chan, she'll feel compelled to use her powers...  If I call Li-kun he'll be terrified it's something to do with Sakura... that is, if Kero-chan isn't bringing him here in a panic already... Hiiragizawa-kun's on the other side of the planet, Kinomoto-sensei's at a conference in Sapporo._

_Touya-san... can't do anything more than I could do, not anymore... _

And then, just about the time she'd decided to ask the security guard to call her a taxi and help her carry Tsukishiro-san out to it, the convulsions passed; he slumped back into his chair, visibly dazed, the flush in his cheeks visible even by the reflected light from the movie screen.

"Tsukishiro-san...?"

Panting for breath, he managed to whisper, "I... I think... that was a feedback loop..."

"From what?"

His eyes were far too bright, and a little glassy, and he giggled as though he were very softly drunk. "From the world's most _amazing_ piece of chocolate...!"

Tomoyo blinked, several times, and then decided which of the several dozen questions clawing for attention was the most vital one. "Everything's all right?"

"Everything's... _wonderful_..."

Feeling her face burning with embarrassment at the sheer sensual euphoria in his voice, Tomoyo turned her attention strictly back to the movie. 

_Lekos instead of fresnels for the backlights, it looks like -- it makes the shadows sharper, but I think they should have gone a bit more soft-focused for this shot, and a little more amber, and..._

Yukito sighed deeply, in trembling bliss, too wrung out even to reach for the half-empty bucket of popcorn they were sharing. (For a certain value of "she'd eaten two handfuls and he'd eaten the rest" sharing, that was.)

_...backlights! Needed another two reflectors at five and seven, it's underexposed at the edges... definitely... more backlights..._

~~@~~

"...oniichan...?"

Every nerve in his body was electrified, and still giving him aftershocks. He'd been almost painfully aware of everything in those few moments, overwhelmed by not one connection, but three. Yuki, of course -- and Yue curled sleeping within him, though not sleeping for long once the connection had hit; he could still feel Yue reeling with it, disoriented by the feedback from a long-latent piece of Touya's magic that now sang both to and from the three of them. And to and from Sakura as well -- it had been her power providing the core of the 'battery,' it had been her power sustaining her Guardians for years now, of course she was a part of the connection -- he'd understood intellectually, before, how tiring her pregnancy must be for her, but he'd never _felt_ it. Now he felt it in her, the deep warm greedy needing of the baby growing in her womb, the way it demanded her life and strength and comfort, the way it drained her reserves -- both physical and magical...

_...how the hell did she put up with this for eight months? Why didn't she give Yue to me months ago...?_

"Because I didn't know if it would set off my labor, to lose that much power so abrup-...oh!" _You didn't SAY that, did you? Oh... oh, goodness..._

She was far more experienced at magic than he was, by now; she put some kind of dampener over the connections that had been made between the lot of them, some kind of magical mute button. Touya blinked to clear his vision, because he'd still been seeing hazy glimmerings of the movie Yukito was barely focusing on, and it had been vaguely alarming to see a print of Helena Bonham Carter's face ghosted into their cheerful living room walls. All gone now, though... he didn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed.

_If he felt everything I felt as clearly as I felt him... then... the next time we touch each other... dear God in heaven..._

"Oniichan, you're not 'hearing' me anymore, right?" Sakura asked.

It took some effort to lift his head enough to focus on her. "Wha'...?" he managed intelligently.

She held up a hand. "How many fingers?"

"Five," he said, then added before she could have a full-out panic attack, "but you're only showing three."

"..._Oniichan!_ You-- you-- ooooooooh!" Then, a moment later, she hugged him fiercely. "You _scared_ me half to death -- I thought I'd done something horribly wrong...! Are you sure you're okay? If you've got enough energy to pick on me you've got to be mostly okay, but... you were shaking all over, and..."

Touya felt himself blushing. _Yeah, an ongoing magic-induced almost-orgasm probably does that to people. God, I can't wait for that movie to get over with, I want Yuki back here, I want my hands on him, and my mouth, and... everything,  everywhere..._

"...Oniichan, are you listening at all?"

"Er... no?" he managed a little sheepishly. "Give me a second... still getting over the fireworks..."

"I'll go get some tea," she said, determinedly heaving her child-burdened girth out of the sofa and half-waddling toward the kitchen in her haste. Touya let his head drop back against the sofa, still lost in fantasies about the possibilities. 

He heard her set the teapot down on the table, and the clink of the glasses, and the quiet ripple of the pouring tea; it smelled sharper than it had for years, crisp and fragrant and wild. Everything felt sharper. Clearer, crisper, almost overwhelmingly so.

_Even if I can't use the power, even if I can't see Mother again,  this alone is amazing; I hadn't realized how much I'd missed..._

"Monster?" he managed faintly. "That thing where I was seeing the movie through Yuki's eyes and all that... what was that...?"

"Eriol-kun and I miscalculated a little," Sakura mumbled. "We thought we'd have to boost the connection a little, because it wasn't your own native magic, it might need some coaxing to connect with you. We'd underestimated how much you'd take in the part that was what Yukito-san was giving back to you, because even though it's a bit of what used to be yours, it's been suffused with his magic now, and..."

"Oh," Touya said, still drifting in the aftermath. "That's nice."

"...But it looks as though something in you wanted it even more eagerly, _because_ it feels like him; you weren't rejecting it even though it didn't feel like yours anymore, so it seems like it's not like physical transplants -- it's -- It was like the stereo being turned on at full volume when we plugged it in, I had to find the volume knob kind of fast and turn it back down... or like adjusting the amperage before the circuits fried... and... um... --and Kero-chan's probably in a panic, I need to call Shaoran..."

Her cell phone rang even while she was saying it, and she dug it out of her purse hastily. "I'm fine! --Yes, Shaoran, I knew it was you, and I'm _fine_... I promise... Kero-chan's just feeling what I did for Yue-san and oniichan, so that oniichan's life can support him too... yes, I _know_ I'm not supposed to do magic now. That wasn't really _doing_ magic as much as just, er, _repackaging_ it a little..." 

Sakura held the phone away from her head a little, smiling ruefully at the indignation of the frantic squawks coming from it. "...No, really, Eriol-kun said that... Shaoran, I promise, I'm fine. Ask Kero-chan. I promise. I'm not sure how well Yue-san's taking it, but I'm _completely_ fine..."

...it sounded like, one way or another, either Kero or her sheer amused patience had gotten through to the brat; now Sakura was blushing and mumbling sugar-laden honey-twiddles into the phone, and then placed the phone against her belly so that the father-to-be could say something revoltingly cute to her bulge, and then they started gooping at each other again, heavily interlaced with assurances of how much everyone was fine and how much everyone loved each other.

_God, were Yuki and I that sappy at each other whenever he left with Sakura to go somewhere?_

Yuki was always a sap. He practically reveled in it. It had to be something about the sugar addiction.

_...Well, _I_ wasn't that sappy, anyway..._

or at least not all the time.

_and even if I was, it's _Yuki. Anyone _would be sappy about him. It's like he's a walking sugar magnet. I can't help it if I was just responding to normal pheromone pressures and..._

Even he couldn't protest that much in the face of his own common sense.

_...yeah, right. Love is love. I haven't got a clue what she sees in the brat, but I know _that_ she sees it in him... that's got to be good enough, right?_

He felt a warm wave of approval, and thought in startlement, _Yuki, are you 'leaning' on my mind?_

Touya could have sworn he heard Yuki giggle.

_You manipulative little... --no wonder Yue looks so cranky all the time, if he's got his own little sugar-fairy conscience thinking CUTE at him so relentlessly! So how do I get to lean on you?_

There was no answer to that, of course.

_Yuki? Yuki, that's not fair..._

The next fuzzy image that was slowly nudged into his mind came with a faint and long-distance but still palpable wave of pink embarrassment. And it involved whipped cream and hot fudge warmed to body temperature.

Touya didn't have to think hard at all to realize the potential for manipulation available there.

_All right, _now_ I forgive you,_ Touya thought, grinning broadly. _As long as you buy whipped cream and hot fudge at the Lawson's on the way home, that is!_

Just to make sure Yuki heard it, he thought _very _loudly about Yukito standing in line at the Lawson's with two containers in his hands, and the giggle of the high school girl who worked at the counter and had a mad crush on the polite and soft-spoken young man. 

_Got it?_

Again, there weren't any words in the reply, but a small ripple of sheepish self-consciousness in the back of his mind definitely wasn't Touya's own. 

...Maybe this was just the lingering aftereffects of the first rush, maybe it wouldn't last long, but Touya planned to enjoy it while it lasted. Maybe he could figure out how to work the controls a little, too... in any case, he was looking forward to experimenting. Maybe his little sister was onto something with the magic-and-science analogy.

(And he couldn't wait to see the expression on Yue's face when he told the angel that Sakura classified him as an always-turned-on refrigerator in the modern-revisionist rewrite of the magical lexicon, too.)


End file.
